Sounds like a hell of a lot of money for a CEO who kept insisting that he had to kill 3rd party apps because Reddit still isn’t profitable.
“Reddit isn’t profitable because leadership is wildly incompetent, so let’s pay them an exorbitant amount of money instead of using that money to properly fix things or make any genuine improvements to anything.”
-reddit
It really feels like all corporations do this.
Then the failed CEO gets another CEO gig because they’ve got “experience”.
- CEOs anywhere
Let’s be real, they did it because they didn’t want people training AI models without paying them. They didn’t give a shit about 3rd party apps.
People that want to train AI models on Reddit content can just scrape the site, or use data from archive sites that archive Reddit content.
The archive sites used to use the API, which is another reason they wanted to get rid of it. I always found they were a great moderation tool as users would always edit their posts to no longer break the rules before they claimed a rogue moderator had banned them for no reason, and there was no way within reddit to prove them wrong.
What about archive sites like web.archive.org and archive.today? Both still work fine for Reddit posts, and neither are blocked in www.reddit.com/robots.txt, so so far they haven’t shown an intent to block them.
Yeah, the Wayback Machine doesn’t use Reddit’s API, but on the other hand, I’m pretty sure they don’t automatically archive literally everything that makes it onto Reddit - doing that would require the API to tell you about every new post, as just sorting /r/all by new and collecting every link misses stuff.
You don’t need every post, just a collection big enough to train an AI on. I imagine it’s a lot easier to get data from the Internet Archive (whose entire mission is historical preservation) than from Reddit.
The thing I’m not sure about is licensing, but it seems like that’d the case for the whole AI industry at the moment.
I’m convinced there was more to it. Otherwise they’d have worked with the app devs to find a mutually beneficial solution. Instead they just acted like massive, deaf assholes through all the drama, blackout…
Of course, it’s totally possible they’re also insanely stupid, arrogant assholes.
It makes the ridiculous prices they were quoting make sense. Because giving API access is giving a key to all that data, which they can then turn around and covertly sell access to. So they priced it so that they wouldn’t have to sell the data at wholesale value to apps that could turn around and undercut their AI training prices.
It’s the same reason why they were considering blocking Google search because Google (or any search engine) uses a crawler to look at all that data and you can’t allow Google to continue without leaving it open to any other crawler, like say an AI training data crawler.
Same thing with any push to make users log in to view comment threads (and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what Musk was thinking of when he was doing/considering the same with Twitter). If only users can access the comment data, then it’s easier to see when a user is reading too much data, or rate limit them. Also the move towards only showing a bit of a comment thread by default.
But that data is the only reason people visit the site and provide more data, so I don’t see this problem ever fully going away for them. The problem they are trying to solve is how to give access to enough data to engage users enough to provide more data while preventing AI trainers from getting that same data for free. If I wanted to, I bet I could write something that would fill a database with comment data and metadata while browsing normally in less than a day and then a bit longer to automate the browsing entirely (depending on what kind of bot detection the site uses). There’s no way for Reddit to stop the manual browsing version and the automated one will be an arms race that will also end in no way for it to be stopped because it emulates a real user to an undetectable level.
Just wait until they start selling “Stockholder Flair”
It’ll say “to the moon” with some animation, and then they’ll take away some other feature of the site because it’s “too expensive to maintain”.
IPO = exit liquidity
Should have picked Harassment. Selecting Spam does nothing.
I’d pick prohibited transaction. I live in AU. NYSE won’t let me trade there.
Either that or “hate” - all redditors can get involved, but not you because you are not from the US. Sounds like communism.
‘Sounds like communism’
Show me people who don’t know what communism, Alex
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You can trade on the New York Stock Exchange in Australia. I trade foreign stock exchanges all the time.
It’s a bit more complicated… you trade through a broker with trading rights on that exchange. Unless you are a power user on a bloomberg terminal.
Reddit could direct sell shares to a US resident, I’m pretty sure, as a first party sale.
That’s exactly how people in the US trade also!
They lost 93 million on 2023, and paid the CEO more than double that.
Nope - can’t think of a single thing they could do to make reddit profitable.
Well kinda but not really, he owns around 4% of Reddit which is where the $193m comes from because of the $5b valuation.
Still, fuck spez
They paid him just shy of 400k. The stock and options he was given have nothing to do with reported losses. It’s all monopoly money until IPO, them we’ll see what it’s worth.
Paying yourself 190 million in stock options when the company is running at a loss is pretty much blatantly admitting that the company is severely overvalued. My guess is that it will tank 90% once it goes public. If not more, Reddit produces nothing inherent of value and they are really hostile to their users.
Spez truly got that little dick energy going on
I take offense to this. I have a little dick. I don’t destroy everything for everyone around me while shitting myself violently. I say he has Caillou energy. Arrogant, narcissistic, hideous, an abject freak, a mistake granted legs and will hopefully suffer from a terminal illness.
Fuck Caillou. Fuck Steve Greedy Pig Boy Spez Huffman
The more I see you post, the more I like you.
“big/little dick energy” is pretty misogynistic, really…
This reeks of small tits energy.
I think misandric is more apt of a description
It’s really just body shaming, no?
This doesn’t apply to sayings. If it does, saying someone has a big head for acting proud is also body shaming. That’s dumb.
This doesn’t apply to sayings
i don’t see why you would think that? it definitely applies to sayings.
btw, notice how everyone has a head but not everyone has a dick? the clue for why it’s misogynistic is in there…
notice how men are endlessly shamed and ridiculed for their dick size, and many people have complexes over it and even kill themselves?
the clue as to why it’s harmful and body shaming is right there…
not a lot of people crying over the size of their head…
there’s no support groups for people with big heads…
Now you get to tell us what you think that word means.
it means (cis) women don’t have dicks, so naturally big dick men are in charge
also men with small dicks are inferior and should feel bad about themselves…or would you like to tell me how it doesn’t mean that?
small pp energy here
let me know when you hit puberty
That’s an insult little dick energy
He wasn’t paid that amount. He got 341,000 in cash and the rest was in stocks and options (which will only be worth that much if the company performs well financially). This us place is just like Reddit, nobody ever reads the article.
It doesn’t really need to perform well financially. He can sell everything as soon as it goes public and retire
But they never do that. Musk could have been supping margaritas on a man made island with oompa loompas in a private ocean a long time ago
Oompa-loompas are extinct. He needs enough money to clone them from mosquitos trapped in amber.
Butterscotch.
He will still be in control of that wealth. It really shouldn’t be treated different from salary compensation
That is how they all get paid, so they can pay less in taxes.
It’s irrelevant.
Still not how that works, if he wants cash he has to sell, selling stocks is heavily taxed. Now he can take a loan against the stocks but if they don’t do well then he’s not going to get much for them. It’s a risk and taxes is paid like it or not.
Still a shit system, but that’s a different discussion, but they pay taxes.
I wouldn’t say heavily taxed. If he exercised his options more than 6 months ago he’ll pay the flat 15% capital gains tax. Whereas his effective tax rate on his salary will be around 30%
Yeah and he can also use the stocks as collateral on a loan and avoid them all together.
I have read that that’s one of the wealthy’s “big secret” ways to avoid taxes. They allegedly live off of those loans as their spending money, while the value of the investments they use as collateral increases over time, but they don’t pay taxes on the Unrealized gains. And they can keep borrowing more as needed with those same investments as collateral.
I don’t have the whole scam figured out though. I’m not sure how they pay back the loans without having to cash out something that would generate a tax burden.
I’m assuming s long s they spread out payments over time and roll lots of the debt into the next loan.
That’s how they become too big to fail at their banks. At least that’s the Donald Trump method. His problem is that he has fuck all for collateral at this point.
Another thing to avoid taxes is donating stock to charities, as you can deduct the market value of the stock rather than just the cost basis.
Say you buy some stock for $100 and it goes up in value to $400. If you sell it, you have to pay capital gains tax on the $300 gain.
However, if you donate it, you don’t have to pay any tax and can deduct the whole $400, meaning your taxable income is reduced by $400 (which would be a ~$120 reduction in income tax for someone with a 30% effective tax rate).
Of course, you still end up with less money than you would have if you didn’t donate. But if you’re going to donate anyways, donating stock with gains is better than donating cash because you’ve already paid income tax on the cash but haven’t paid any tax on the stock gains.
If he waits for longer than a year, short term under a year is taxed at normal income rates.
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The interest rate on taking loans against assets is usually less than paying the taxes for selling the same assets
“They pay taxes” - right, and the effective rate is lower this way. That’s why executive compensation went this route decades ago.
Which is why, as I said, they all get paid this way.
If they sell after holding it for more than a year, if they short term sell the stock under a year it’s a normal income tax on said stock.
If they sell all of it that year. Which they don’t, even if they sell any at all the same year as issued. They stagger sales, and generally are doing it a year after, if they aren’t just taking a loan against the stock and using that.
It’s part of the compensation regardless of if you want to pretend otherwise. It’s income, it belongs in the total.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I think it’s a shit system as well, I’m just pointing out what a lot of people seem to think is 0 taxes on stocks.
They can take out loans with the stocks as collateral. The money received from loans isn’t taxable.
That still requires you to make sure the stock are worth something, and you have to pay interest on that loan.
I think people are thinking I’m defending the system, I’m not, I’m just pointing out how it works.
This place is also just like reddit in that comments like yours seeking to seem smarter than everyone else by pointing out technicalities in the article as evidence everyone has the wrong idea, without appreciating the full context, and deliberately ignoring the overall point.
Executives paid in stocks and options are completely normal, and those stock options have a value. Moreover, those things were not given to other employees nearly as much as they were given to the CEO.
The actual dollar amount he receives from Reddit is not what matters. What matters is the amount of compensation given to him in comparison to everyone else at Reddit and to other CEOs at other companies, especially when taking his performance into account.
The point is Reddit is effectively giving way too much of its value to one person who has done little to actually make it profitable in all the time he’s been there while routinely making mistakes and allowing scandals that have hurt Reddit’s reputation.
The context is important since it informs us about why he’s doing this, which is probably to further inflate his stock value
But also Tim Cook’s total compensation for 2022 was $99 million and Satya Nadella’s 2023 was $48 million. Paying him more than CEOs of actually profitable companies and what amounts to nearly 1/4 of revenue is a pretty big outlier.
Steve Jobs was wealthy despite having a salary of $1 per year.
Seems to me the institutional investors aren’t interested at the price they’re asking.
Nah, if you click through to the sign up they ask you for a bunch of personal information on a form hosted on reddit.com and then say “there are a limited number of spots, we will accommodate as many people as we can.”
A month from now, 99% of people who fill out that form will be “wait listed” but reddit will have their real name and phone number forever. That’s the grift.
While cutting off reddit apps that are better than the bloated shitshow that is the reddit app
So my 16 year account with 90k legit comment karma wasnt good enough to be invited?
Now I dont get to early participate in the fomo panic IPO being forced by investors?
I could’ve made or lost tens of dollars.
I’m at 10 year with about 500k combined. They sent me one. I laughed. Made me feel about as special as being given a pizza Friday at a job I’d been working for just as long. Actually, I would have been happier with the pizza.
that’s so weird because I got an email inviting me to participate and I haven’t ever been considered a ‘prolific poster’. I’m only at 60k and 12 years. I had no clue I was invited until I looked in my spam folder.
Honestly, I’m kinda looking forward to the IPO - because it might be the last enshittification straw that breaks the camel’s neck that will finally drown reddit for what it has become.
What’s next? Reddit Coin? NFTs?
Doesn’t reddit already have NFTs?
They also do have a reddit vault for crypto
Maybe Shoes…
That’s already there since a couple of years.
Most of that money is in stock, so he’s doing this to further inflate his stock value
This is such an amazing grift. I can’t wait until more social media firms start trying to direct-market their stock to their user base.
No way this can backfire
And watch as being a shareholder confers no tangible benefits for owning stock in the website of which you are a user, or worse, you get benefits, but they are limited to how much stock you have.
That’s how stock normally works.
Hope the IPO is a fucking disaster and Hufflepig goes bankrupt
Ironic that reddit goes the way of digg.
