Final week, Reddit, the 19 12 months outdated social(ish) platform and long-time spine of the web, went up for IPO. 

The information will not be precisely a shock; the corporate has been hinting at it for years now, and initially filed in 2021 earlier than the market turned unfavourable. It’s, nonetheless, fascinating to see the passion for the inventory, which soared greater than 75% in its first week, given it has by no means turned a revenue (its web losses final 12 months totalled $90.8 million, regardless of 20% YoY development in revenues). Customers of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, finest recognized for being the place the place the GameStop brief squeeze originated again in 2021, are overtly discussing shorting the Reddit inventory. To some, it “looks like a gimmick”; others have mentioned “it sort of feels like the ultimate nail in Reddit’s coffin after years of degrading high quality”. 

What precisely is Reddit? 

Based on its 2023 prospectus, Reddit was one of many high ten most-visited websites within the US. But, lower than a tenth of US customers go to it weekly, in accordance with MIDiA’s client survey. In precept, Reddit is a topic-organised discussion board for all the things; a repository of area of interest neighborhood data; a spot for dialogue, each civil and obscene; and a subculture hub housed in distinctive and (at occasions) competing subreddits.

For the overwhelming majority of the individuals who go to the platform, it’s a place to seek out the solutions to obscure questions they can not discover wherever else. For others, it’s a place to discover their obscure passions with like minded web-dwellers. Be it looking out “the best way to repair Mac sound going 1.5 velocity when HDMI cable is plugged into TV” or happening the rabbit gap of fan theories (Sport of Thrones’ foremost subreddit, r/ASOIAF, was the place readers pieced collectively the true origins of Jon Snow lengthy earlier than the reveal episode aired), there actually is one thing for everybody… and the dearth of centralised moderation has been crucial in permitting this to develop. 

It is usually this lack of centralised governance that, when threatened, has despatched the platform into protest blackouts. Common customers usually categorical distaste for the CEO, Steve Huffman, who has been accountable for some odd (and sometimes failed) makes an attempt at altering the platform.

What modifications are more likely to accompany the IPO, and what’s going to this imply for the platform? 

To be price investing in, Reddit has to begin really making a living. It has outlined three foremost methods by which it is going to do that in its prospectus: growing advert revenues, licensing its user-generated content material to AI firms, and permitting customers to monetise their very own subreddits, whereas taking a minimize of the income. 

With out requiring an account to make use of it, the platform doesn’t have the identical specificity of consumer knowledge utilized by different platforms to hyper-target adverts – problematic for ad-saturated shoppers. The concept of promoting its knowledge for AI coaching has some floor advantage, however maybe not large long-term potential. The worth of its dataset will not be within the uploads taking place day-after-day, which now have the potential to be AI generated (thus contaminating the coaching knowledge), however somewhat within the practically two-decade backlog of primarily textual content and picture content material uploaded to it. The long-term enterprise alternative additionally finally requires generative-text language studying fashions (LLMs) to turn out to be worthwhile on their very own. Google has already organized a $60 million per 12 months take care of Reddit to entry its knowledge, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who’s one in every of Reddit’s largest shareholders and was as soon as its CEO for eight entire days, has reportedly already used Reddit knowledge to coach ChatGPT. Development on this space is subsequently attainable, however maybe restricted long-term. 

The third providing is to show Reddit right into a kind of DIY impartial creator house and take a minimize of the income, á la OnlyFans for nerds of issues like squirrels, DOTA, and crochet suggestions. This has not appeared to evoke enthusiasm from a neighborhood that’s largely united by its distaste for company meddling. With the creator financial system probably not worthwhile for the long-tail of informal creators (which most avid Reddit customers could be), that is additionally a late step into an oversaturated sport – and should push customers away altogether. 

The final wild west of the web 

Reddit should successfully reinvent itself as a platform to be worthwhile. It should incentivise customers who’re accustomed to nameless, multi-account looking to stay to single accounts from which it might probably derive and promote higher knowledge to advertisers, flip open-source communities into monetisable walled gardens, and closely average content material – a big problem contemplating the absence of guidelines in opposition to hate speech till as just lately as 2020. All of that is technically attainable, however that model of Reddit will likely be virtually unrecognisable from the present one, and can probably have a really totally different userbase. The closest we now have seen to this kind of transition is Twitter to X, with the CEOs of Reddit and X bearing exceptional charismatic similarities, and the outcomes of that transition have been removed from the resounding success a stockholder would possibly hope for. No matter whether or not the platform modifications fully and turns into financially rewarding, or loses sad customers and finally collapses as an organization (which some r/WallStreetBets customers suspect will be the plan), the Reddit we all know (and a few even love) at this time will stop to exist. And that will likely be a really totally different web, certainly. 

Reddit is among the final remaining wild wests of the early web, and it has been rising tamer. Whereas 4Chan has largely disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist, Reddit, Google, Wikipedia and YouTube nonetheless stand because the remaining centralised ‘go to’s’ for something one would possibly want to seek out. YouTube has discovered its footing within the new world and Google stays invaluable (though doubtlessly threatened by TikTok and the likes of ChatGPT, which consolidate solutions somewhat than merely offering hyperlinks). Exterior of those, the web has decentralised. Social platforms, lengthy the hubs of gathering and dialogue, are slowly fragmenting each internally, by means of an awesome variety of feature-driven use instances, or by way of competitors from different apps. 

Shedding Reddit as a gathering place means one of many final such gathering locations is gone. Ought to lights exit throughout the platform, we may face the start of a digital darkish age as the ultimate massive digital city squares dissolve into tiny digital neighbourhoods, with no connective infrastructure left to hyperlink them.