• Clbull@lemmy.worldOP
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    9 months ago

    I work in financial reporting, so I have a decent idea of what makes up things like operating profit/loss and Adjusted EBITDA.

    This does not look good for Reddit and if the company only managed a $90.8m loss after jacking up API costs, nuking virtually every third-party client, backstabbing every power mod, giving alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin an actual user base and selling off user data to Google, then I fully expect things to get a lot worse on the site.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I don’t know how in the hell they let it go as wrong as they did. They had all the eyeballs of the internet. They had all the Google search traffic. They had an API that encouraged tons of other people to make applications that link with them to display their content.

      All they had to do was light touch monetization, and slightly stroke the egos of the mods. Every new phone, car, light bulb that ever came out had a place where it could be directed right at the people they want to sell it to. All they had to do was disguise it as an unboxing or a slightly pithy review. Hell, they could have gotten competitors to bid against each other. Chevy could have been on there dissing forward, Ford could have been on their dissing Dodge. They’re so many opportunities there for monetization. They have control over their own algorithm.

      • Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You’re totally forgetting the part where from the very top down that company is run by total fuckwads.

        They’ve fucked up at every single step and remained utterly self righteous throughout.

  • moistclump@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Why don’t company’s pay their CEOs in exposure and sense of pride? If it’s good enough for moderators and artists it should be good for CEOs.

  • EndOfLine@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    There are 54 pages of risk factors, which, after reading many S-1 filings over the years, seems pretty long. One of the most notable is the sentence, “We have incurred substantial losses during our history and may never achieve profitability.”

    Well that doesn’t sound very promising for them.

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      may never achieve profitability.

      I’m not an expert or anything, but that doesn’t sound like a very good investment.

      • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        My understanding is on these fillings you’re supposed to give a full accounting of all the risks so investors can’t sue you later. It’s like going for surgery where they say you could die - not saying it’s likely, but tries to get them off the hook.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Why would anyone give money to a business who has never ran in the black after 20 years? Just set your money on fire instead

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Dumb people are going to see headlines about “AI” and “the first social media IPO in a long time,” and they’re going fork over money. Also speculators are going to buy after they speculate that other speculators are going to buy speculatively.

      • butterflyattack@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yeah, this IPO will probably go just fine and a bunch of wankers will make a bunch of money. That’s what it’s all about, after all.

    • voracitude@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Better, buy a lottery ticket with it. That way it might be worth as much as the ash you’d have anyway, but there’s a chance you’ll become a millionaire.

      Or Bitcoin, but fair warning: you might find yourself tempted to start a rap career, and that’s almost never advisable.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Don’t worry, the IPO will not stop the losses. It will just provide a pool for more bonus payments for the management.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Whole thing is sketchy AF. I hope very few of its selected users falls for the scam invitation to buy early shares. They’re not only exploiting them for free content and free moderation, they want them to help pay for Spez’s ludicrous compensation.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      When it comes to the inevitable Renaissance and guillotines, I just hope spez is close to the front of the line.

      This post will probably get automoderated to suicidesville. It’s sensitive to the fally blade decapitator thingy.

    • moistclump@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I’ve known about shorting for a while but this might actually push me into learning the ins and outs of how. Because it would be nice to profit off this goin tits up.