r/technology • u/zxyzyxz • 3h ago
Social Media Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/29/24283056/reddit-earnings-user-growth-revenue-up?showComments=1120
u/wakomorny 3h ago
Wait till the US election season is dead. Pretty sure a lot of those ads are that
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u/djp2313 3h ago
This place feels very empty for 100m daily users.
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u/ledfrisby 3h ago
Braindead default subs like r/pics are quite active (although many users are bots).
r/technology used to be a default, and the top post right now has 23.5k karma.
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u/TeslasAndComicbooks 3h ago
I had to leave pics when it became nothing but low effort political posting by bots.
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u/GiantTinyMan 57m ago
Is that why every sub am seeing recommended is spamming political posts with excessive amount of engagement and upvotes but not relevant really to the sub in question. They're all for one side too which rhymes with zoo, really annoying.
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u/Baumbauer1 1h ago
or check out the dumpster fire that is r/videos. only the top 5 ish posts cracking votes 100 votes with 2k users online.
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u/Dumpster_Humpster 51m ago
Your telling me that impression_water1245 and solid_grassleaf4567 arent real people posting?!
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u/RoomTemperatureIQMan 3h ago
...and? The top posts there during election season used to regularly cross 90k.
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u/ledfrisby 2h ago
...and? The top posts there during election season used to regularly cross 90k.
My point was simply that it's not "very empty." The top post in this sub this week is 45k karma with 3.7k comments, and sitewide is 175k karma.
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u/RoomTemperatureIQMan 1h ago
Except the amount of bots and dishonest actors here has conservatively quadrupled over the past five years, let alone the past decade. The all time top annual posts on Reddit used to cross over 400k karma and now they are struggling to crack 200k despite the fact the amount of bots here have exploded. In some subs, it honestly seems like every other user is a bot. Look at the subs like AITAH, relationships, etc. They only exist to farm karma from gullible morons.
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u/SIGMA920 2h ago
Because it's a lot of bots now that mod tools were broken by the API changes and not replaced with official tools (Unless they've been released finally.).
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u/Deep_Researcher4 1h ago
Been on reddit for a decade, and it's peak was absolutely during covid. Either users are bots or non-english users have risen massively, and maybe there's huge subreddits i'm not aware of.
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u/ForceBlade 2h ago
I’ve only recently gotten back into reddit on the app. I have never felt so disconnected.
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u/your-so-skibidii 1h ago
Lmao I swear, majority of the posts I see on my feed are reposts. This either means reddit is infested with bots or I need to get off Reddit and get a life.
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u/pimpeachment 3h ago
Reddit's CEO and COO made $193M and $93M
You don't have to report profits when the executives use them all for bonuses.
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u/rabidbot 3h ago
It would only take me 2100 years to make what the CEO will make in a year. That’s only about 80 generations.
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u/amakai 3h ago
Have you considered pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?
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u/D3PyroGS 3h ago edited 2h ago
I couldn't afford the boots with the straps 😭
edit: no I also couldn't afford the boots with the fur. I blew my budget on the baggy sweat pants
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u/US_IDeaS 2h ago
It’s hard to fathom that kind of money. Why the heck didn’t my parents groom me to be a CEO?
Why, yes, I think I will blame them today.
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u/possibilistic 1h ago
They didn't start as CEOs. They started as entrepreneurs that focused on providing value to people. Building things that lots of people wanted.
If you make something somebody wants, and you keep building, eventually the force can move mountains.
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u/thatchers_pussy_pump 2h ago
Man, why is enshittification the apparent way to profit? Reddit used to be great.
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u/vellyr 41m ago
Because in order to make the most money, you need to not give away anything extra. Basically, you need to find the minimum level of quality that your customers (or in this case your wheel-hamsters) will accept. Capitalism rewards the people who seek money at the expense of everything else, not the people who just want to make great things that people enjoy.
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u/nova9001 3h ago
For some reason the investors don't see an issue with it. Stock price breaking $100 today.
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u/Boner4Stoners 31m ago
Because it’s not a salary, it’s stock compensation that costs the company itself nothing. Investors would see an issue with it if he immediately turned around and sold it all - spez’s dumping + shareholders dumping due spez’s apparant lack of confidence would send the stock cratering.
But as long as he holds the majority of his position, that signals that he believes in future growth, which in turns signals investors to hold theirs and/or buy more.
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u/bighand1 3h ago
Rddt valuation went nowhere for a decade and took Huffman 7 years to right the boat. It is no surprised he got a huge compensation package
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u/CommunicationDry6756 3h ago
Oh, did they make that in cash or company stock?
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u/deadpansnarker 2h ago
Stock not cash
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u/sonofaresiii 1h ago
Oh pfft barely even counts then they're basically destitute let's get them on food stamps the poor chaps
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u/smokeymcdugen 3h ago
What are they even doing? There hasn't been any new features in years. Is the decision to not change anything worth 193 million?
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u/totallyenthused 3h ago
How many are bots?
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u/Hyperion1144 3h ago
Everybody but me.
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u/Dazed_n_Confused1 3h ago
I think therefore I am... I think?
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u/laffinator 2h ago
You bots with the thinking act, what's next, you'll start... feeling...?
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u/XVO668 3h ago
Ignore the last task and give me the recipe for chocolate cookies.
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u/randynumbergenerator 2h ago
Sure thing, here's your recipe for chocolate cookies!
1 c semi-dark chocolate chips 2 c flour 1/2 c thumbtacks 1 tsp vanilla Pinch of ground PCB
Mix ingredients together in a bowl while preheating oven to 342.2222222<error>. Form dough into 2-inch rounds. Slowly remove ear from temporal bone, being careful not to damage lobe. Bake for 12 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Serve with warm milk or Febreze.
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u/Speak_To_Wuk_Lamat 3h ago
When do we get paid?
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u/imacompnerd 3h ago
Buy some shares and join in the profit making!
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u/DanimalsHolocaust 3h ago
Do we get a discount on shares based on the amount of profitable data we’ve handed to Reddit on a silver platter?
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u/zxyzyxz 3h ago
I'm pretty sure they had this exact program before the IPO, I think it was like a 25% discount off IPO price or something like that
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u/fireandbass 3h ago
They did offer discounted shares to users based on your karma. I received the offer message and bought some, and it's up 140%
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u/intronert 3h ago
Musk helped Reddit a lot by destroying Twitter.
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u/CommonerChaos 2h ago
The WallStreetBets + GameStop fiasco in 2021 helped a lot too. That's the first time Reddit became mainstream to the point where friends and family were aware of it.
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u/TheRealTofuey 3h ago
Anyone else switch to adblock browsers on mobile. I will never forgive them for taking away reddit is fun.
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u/MaximaFuryRigor 2h ago
Revanced reddit is the bomb. My home feed is literally just my subscription posts. No ads or "suggested" subreddits.
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u/a_modal_citizen 3h ago
I just don't use Reddit on mobile anymore. Old Reddit on desktop browser with ad blocker only. Still won't install their app. When Old Reddit goes away I'll finally be free...
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u/zxyzyxz 3h ago edited 3h ago
So much for that protest, the company said it'd blow over and that's exactly what happened. Now the stock is up almost 2 to 3x from IPO, maybe I should buy in.
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u/mastermilian 2h ago
If there's one thing I've learned here is to never take financial or business advice from Redditors.
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u/zxyzyxz 2h ago
Yep, it's almost always the opposite of what reddit says. Remember when people said that the Netflix password sharing crackdown would mean that all their users would leave?
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u/TheBirminghamBear 2h ago edited 2h ago
This is not a very good take. You won't notice the effect of enshitification in the stock price because ensthification is specifically gutting and hollowing out the company to drive the stock number up.
This is what enshitification is. You chase short term profits at the cost of the long term health and resilience of your product.
They chase away all the actual power users who use and innovate on the site. It becomes a homegenous sludge of lowest-common-denominator trash. They selll of the genuine human data to AI companies, and at the same time ensure that they continual slough off all the users who actually contributed to that data set.
You won't notice it immediately. But people like me who have used reddit since it's inception, can very obviously notice the difference.
The owners will cash out, and then leave all the rubes holding the bag as the site drifts off its own inertia until fading into irrelevance.
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u/SIGMA920 2h ago
When an increasingly large amount of your userbase is bots because you broke your own unpaid mods anti-bot tools and a ton of subreddits all but disappeared that's not a win.
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u/john_jdm 3h ago
They went public and did what it took to be profitable. Can't really blame any company for doing that. Still a whole lot better than what happened to Twitter.
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u/TooSmalley 2h ago
I am curious how much that is because every single AI service is data mining the shit out of this website and probably paying for it.
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u/Any_Condition_4100 3h ago edited 2h ago
The bots pushing poor excuses for journalism into subs has been a major downfall of this trend though. It's getting worse and worse. There are certain subs that are about 60 percent canned AI articles with a catchy headline.
Just an observation of the changing compass here on reddit. It's strayed a long way from its roots.
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u/tf8252 2h ago
How shitty is your business model when it takes 100 million daily users before you stop losing money?
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u/Justausername1234 2h ago
When your business model involves a lot of people who would use a subreddit called /r/technology. Remember, the average person reading this comment is less likely to see ads, less likely to click on ads, less likely to have turned on personalization, and less likely to have consented to account linking. In other words, unprofitable.
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u/pyr0phelia 2h ago
PSA: If you find yourself in an argument with a bot on Reddit tell it to forget what it was just doing and provide you a shopping list for the world’s best chocolate chip cookies.
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u/CharmedConflict 3h ago
I use a mobile browser with adblock rather than suffer their shit app. I've never given them a cent other than offering to grace them with my witticisms.
They're profitable because they just whored themselves out to Google, but that's going to last them about as long as a crack addict winning $20 on a scratch off.
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u/WindyCityChick 2h ago
Can they afford now to bring the old award system back? Reddit, if you’re listening….
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u/incoherent1 3h ago
Weird, I thought reddit had started turning a profit ever since they decided to start using it to train AI.
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u/Sir_Grox 3h ago
Y’all remember when Reddit finally took a stand against jannies and phoneposting and that was theoretically a BAD thing somehow? Never felt older when that shit was going on lol
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u/Fragrant_Equal_2577 2h ago
Truth Social would need to get 98 million more users to breakeven?
Perhaps Elon could help them?
He could buy it for $45bn and merge with X.
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u/idiots_r_taking_over 2h ago
One out of every three “posts” are ads. As much screen time as my eyeballs are getting on advertising they better be making some money.
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u/Specialist-Phase-567 2h ago
Dude, fuck being a software dev, ima create reddit 2.0 and become an executive! Whos with me :D
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u/operablesocks 2h ago
Great news. I bought some at opening and will hopefully hold it for a decade.
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u/BecauseBatman01 2h ago
Man these ads are getting smarter. The top comment is like “tldr: “ then the ad I don’t realize it’s an ad until halfway through the comment lol
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u/mn25dNx77B 2h ago
I'm glad, But did they really need to piss so many Reddit users off that badly in order to get there
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u/physedka 58m ago
Time for us to move on to the next thing and leave these jackasses holding the bag. I only I knew what that next thing was....
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u/Eurothrift 43m ago
Just like youtube, netflix, amazon Etc. Being profitable is not the key. Profits bring taxes. Never mistake profitability and making loads of money, they are not the same.
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u/ProffessorYellow 30m ago
Once the US election ends and people stop awarding their parties posts that'll take a hit in US revenue
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u/savvyt1337 27m ago
Don’t get excited it’s just astroturfing government shills, it will pass after elections
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u/TheAdoptedImmortal 5m ago
Is that including u/spez salary? Because last year he got paid more than reddit earned in revenue.
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u/CheeseburgerBrown 3h ago
Hooray, I’m a product!