Reddit’s future hinges on whether its 60,000+ mods can coexist with Wall Street’s expectations.,
**One of my favorite articles about one of my favorite companies**
“The imposition of API fees was meant to demonstrate that Reddit could establish a substantial new revenue stream. It also showed something else: that the risk of future mod uprisings was an enduring threat to Reddit’s ads business, which drove 98% of its $804M in 2023."
Reddit’s whole strategy is dependent on the loyalty of mods. It's become evident that volunteers, who provide millions of dollars in free labor to Reddit annually, truly share control of the service.
“Sometimes in charge of communities tens of million strong, the mods make the rules in their subreddits. They’ve turned the platform into one of the world’s most inventive laboratories for online content moderation, with approaches as diverse as the troublemakers they counter. It’s easy for some people to see those mods as loud dissenting voices, but I see them as building the communities people come for.”
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“For good and for ill, Reddit has long been an island of authenticity in an increasingly artificial world: a place where real people, hiding behind the privacy of fake names, share their rabid enthusiasms, expertise, and morbid thoughts; where viral memes and movements bubble up from a primordial soup of upvotes and chatter; where a million users each donate $1 to a stranger just to make a millionaire for the fun of it; and where people with drinking problems, parenting crises, or crushing debt can find one another and compare notes on the struggle.
In the end, a number of our sources have come to the same conclusion: Too many people are passionate about Reddit for it not to hold significant value. “The best businesses to invest in are the ones everyone seems to hate, but they keep using,” says Noor Al, a mod for the stock tips forum r/wallstreetbets
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