Reddit to lay off about 5% of workforce: Report
www.livemint.com
Reddit is laying off 5% of its workforce and slowing hiring as part of company's restructuring efforts, the report said
      • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party
        0·
        3 years ago

        Initial Public Offer. Basically, the company going public on the stock market. They tend to try and look “shiny” before going public to make them attractive to buyers who want to make money from investing into the company.

        In my experience (from working a place that has done this) they will do some waves of layoffs and make some operational budget cuts, as well as sometimes freeze some capex spending so the books look juicier. This includes things that may cause long-term harm, for short ish (under a year) gain.

        Script is pretty similar with most companies that do this in tech, with predictable results.

        • Rhabuko@feddit.de
          0·
          3 years ago

          The only thing I ask myself right now is: Do they get rid of porn subs before IPO or shortly after?

        • mrbruh@lemmy.one
          0·
          3 years ago

          Firstly I want to really thank you for taking time to write up this response.

          Anyways it definitely makes sense what reddit it doing, although it’s no excuse for being such a little bitch. So in other words, let them burn lol

          • leetnewb@beehaw.org
            0·
            3 years ago

            To be fair, most tech companies had layoffs in the last six months and it seems that most were bigger cuts. Also, my best guess is that Reddit has been unprofitable/burning cash from the beginning (~18 years) - that can’t and won’t last forever.

            • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party
              0·
              3 years ago

              This is also very true. Tech sector has been doing layoffs and admittingly these ones are pretty tiny in comparison to some other places, which is another factor why I think there will be more. And burning cash is quite true, which is part of why their investors are probably pushing hard for them to be ready for an IPO.

            • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
              0·
              3 years ago

              Honestly, I never really figured how something like reddit (or most social media) was going to be profitable to begin with. At least in a long term sense. They’re entirely dependent on ads, but ads don’t make a lot of money unless you’re running the network. So you end up being an ad business, not a social media business. But of course, no one wants to watch an ad before / after every post - yet that seems to about be where reddit is coming to. And these people don’t want to pay to be on social media, or else things like “The Well” would have been much bigger than they are (how many people are clamoring to pay $15 a month lol).

              I just also think, if you haven’t found a way to make money in 18 years, it seems like a foolish bet that you’ll be able to keep running the same kind of business and now find a way.

    • Nullroad@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 years ago

      Agreed. I think the post-IPO layoffs will be aggressive in Reddit’s case.

      It’s not clear to me how reddit could possibly “grow”. They’ve hit peek influence, and ad-revenues haven’t really been a growth factor that has excited investors. They’re not really a technology powerhouse like Facebook or Google - all they have is their central product. So, when the IPO drops, all I can see for reddit is a future of aggressive layoffs and strong enshittification of Reddit as they seek capitalistic eternal increasing growth.

      • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.party
        0·
        3 years ago

        Yeah Reddit would make an excellent private company with the right owner and likely some re-structuring, but as a public company ooh boy.

        Outside some niche subs I’m not on there more than once a day just to see if my lemmy subs missed something, and it’s my last form of social media outside discord/matrix, so if lemmy does take off enough I’ll probably only be there for the odd technical search, which I suspect lemmy will take care of in time.

    • arctic pie (he/him)@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      3 years ago

      The fucked up thing is that it kind of is…layoffs of this kind almost always have a positive impact on stock prices, which is why they do them. Gotta love capitalism!

      • Rentlar@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        Yeah, upon reflection you are right… this looks to be Reddit saying “notice me, potential shareholders, I’m so efficient!”

      • XLRV@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        Disgusting, this is is why this system needs to die, infinite growth is unsustainable, like a cancer, fucking over people is seen as a good thing for “business”, how infuriating.

    • nLuLukna @lemmy.one
      0·
      3 years ago

      It’s getting there… The Reddit wave should be enough to get us there if the servers hold up semidecently

      • el_cordoba@beehaw.org
        0·
        3 years ago

        Even if the servers don’t. I’d rather deal with downtime (aka forced detox😅) than the ads, the negative trolls, the dumb UI that constantly pushes their app, and so on. Reddit only works because it has so much fresh content. If that breaks down than so will it.

      • Neopolitan@infosec.pubEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        If I could figure out how to participate from my existing fediverse account…that would be the true magic.

  • BobQuasit@beehaw.org
    0·
    3 years ago

    All this has me wondering. Lemmy and other fediverse sites should be resistant to enshittification. But how could American corporations screw that up? Could they start their own servers and instances, and somehow make them dominant? Or would that not be worth it to them?

    It seems to me that capitalism has pretty much been trying to take over everything, with a lot of success. So I find myself wondering if it could happen here.

    • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 years ago

      It could absolutely happen here! But the nice part is that people can choose to engage with it. Whereas with reddit, you’re forced to engage with capitalism. Don’t want ads here? Switch servers and donate to a smaller one.

      • luna@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        Apple’s iChat (precursor to Messages.app) used to do XMPP, too. I don’t think it federated, or if it did it was very short-lived, but all the big tech companies with chat services got their start with XMPP. It’s almost like it’s a great set of tools for communicating, which, sadly and ironically, open source tech seems to have moved on from. To be fair, I far prefer Matrix’s JSON to XMPP’s XML, but it’s a little disappointing that everyone forgets about XMPP.

    • luna@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 years ago

      We’re kind of already seeing it with Mastodon. The official app strongly pushes people toward mastodon.social which is a radioactive dumpster fire. And this isn’t even corporate America, it’s just the folks who own the name.

        • luna@beehaw.org
          0·
          3 years ago

          The biggest issue is that they don’t really moderate, so hate speech and bigotry have a greater presence there. I specifically remember a situation where multiple people were reporting things and it took them days (maybe a week or more? I can’t remember, but certainly several days) to take it down. And this happens pretty regularly.

        • luna@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          3 years ago

          Your points are valid and you’re not wrong, but it’s exacerbated by the poor / lack of moderation as I commented elsethread. You can have a large number of users and still have a tolerable, even useful and pleasant, experience–r/askhistorians is my favorite example of internet moderation.

    • sw4nky@lemmy.one
      0·
      3 years ago

      Theoretically some large company could use the “embrace, extend, extinguish” model to take over “open” standards. Microsoft was famous back then for using this strategy. It would look something like this:

      1. Embrace: large company creates a really stable and well moderated instance that federates with almost everything to attract users

      2. Extend: large company adds custom features to the instance that are incompatible with other instances

      3. Extinguish: people stop using other instances as incompatibilities start impacting user experience. Big instance might also stop federating with other instances, so users are forced to use their instance to see content. After this, big company starts making the platform shittier to make more money.

  • SamC@lemmy.nz
    0·
    3 years ago

    Some people have been saying a 2-day blackout isn’t going to do much. But if they’re struggling financially it will most likely really hurt them.

    • Liz@beehaw.org
      0·
      3 years ago

      Hopefully if the 2-day blackout is unsuccessful they’ll extend it or plan more blackouts.

      • SamC@lemmy.nz
        0·
        3 years ago

        I’d imagine so… it makes sense to me to start with 2 days, and then go from there, rather than starting with the “nuclear” option.

        • Ilikemoney@beehaw.org
          0·
          3 years ago

          Does Reddit have the power to un-blackout the subreddits? I.e. Overrule the mods and open things up? I feel like, as in most cases, there are a modest sized group of high caring individuals that will reject/boycott/cancel reddit, but the majority of users, casual and the ones that make reddit their life, will just continue on, only slightly inconvenienced.

          • Longpork_afficianado@lemmy.one
            0·
            3 years ago

            If they hijack the subs and revive them without the mods then they’re going to have a very hard time weeding out the troll content that will inevitably flood in from disgruntled users who want to see it burn down. Good luck selling ad space when every second post is 4chan-esque rants about niggerfags.

            • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
              0·
              3 years ago

              Hey, I don’t think you were trying to be hurtful with this comment, but slurs - even when not directed at a user - don’t really have a place in the type of community that we’re trying to cultivate here.

          • SamC@lemmy.nz
            0·
            3 years ago

            Yes Reddit could do that… but mods are extremely valuable, and a lot of subs would stop working without them. Reddit has already been moving to big subs being moderated by Reddit employees, and it generally kills the sub.

            Reddit is big enough that it probably won’t die quickly (e.g. like Digg did), but my guess is that this kind of policy shows that the best days of Reddit are in the past.

            • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMEnglish
              0·
              3 years ago

              Reddit is big enough that it probably won’t die quickly (e.g. like Digg did), but my guess is that this kind of policy shows that the best days of Reddit are in the past.

              i think twitter is a good model for how we might expect this to go: a slow but undeniable decay into a worse, less functional, generally more miserable site to be on. when the decay will end? who knows. but there’ll likely be an obvious before and after, and an equally obvious point where the site goes from a vanguard of influence online to a social media backwater.

              • AnagrammadiCodeina@feddit.itEnglish
                0·
                3 years ago

                While i basically never used twitter, i dont see it dying. Some sources post decresing userbase some are saying that after the big hit things started to go back to normal People forgets. Today they protest, tomorrow they bend.

              • SamC@lemmy.nzEnglish
                0·
                3 years ago

                Agree, although it could happen even slower than Twitter. Musk taking over has been a huge shock to the community, and killing off third party apps is only one of the many changes he’s made in a few months. Even if Reddit sticks of their guns on API charges (which they might not), I doubt they’ll do anything as drastic again for a while.

              • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgMEnglish
                0·
                3 years ago

                in fact a good metric for this might be when reddit stops contributing anywhere near as many productive search results as it currently does. that’s undeniably a big use of the site for people so it’d be noteworthy for that to disappear (and despite itself being a symptom of bad things it’d probably be quite bad overall, given the state of online generally right now.)

        • Morgie@beehaw.org
          0·
          3 years ago

          I saw somewhere (can’t remember if it was here or not) that they think Reddit might not be too worried about the 3rd party apps because it makes up such a small user base. So it could potentially be a vocal minority who are actually being affected. Then again what do I know about running a website with millions of daily users, so it could be way off.

          • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
            0·
            3 years ago

            If that’s true, it’s even more asinine. A small number of users make numerous API calls from third-party apps, and in doing so, create all the content that the majority of users are perusing with ads? The quest for short-term gains so often harms long-term viability in corporate America, and I truly just don’t understand how we keep hiring C-level people that keep making the same mistakes over and over

            • Morgie@beehaw.org
              0·
              3 years ago

              Absolutely agree. Also this was just a comment I saw so who knows if it’s actually true or not but it’s something I could see happening unfortunately.

              • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
                0·
                3 years ago

                For sure it’s unconfirmed. The only things we really know for sure are:

                1. Reddit wants money for API calls
                2. Their monetization structure is unreasonable
                3. The only possible outcome of their monetization structure is the death of third party apps
                4. Reddit is an American company and conducts itself with the same grace and farsightedness as most of them

                Which leads be to the conclusion that the thing you’ve said is quite possible

                • LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml
                  0·
                  3 years ago

                  I’m not American, but isn’t it mandated by law over there to do stuff like this, to create the maximum profit for shareholders?

                  Forgive my ignorance of US laws!

            • m_talon@beehaw.org
              0·
              3 years ago

              Because C-Level people are more about “how can this company make money” and less about “how can this company treat its workers/customers well” (unless the latter leads to the former).

              They are told that increasing value for the investors is the thing that matters. If you have to make “tough choices” that abuse the workers or destroy the brand, oh well. It’s worth it if that revenue number keeps going up. To them, it’s an acceptable loss to keep the board happy.

              Every company that has VC, investors, or stock is going to be like this at one point or another. It’s just getting more blatant and obvious now. Disney, WB, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit…it’s a list that just keeps growing.

            • M. Orange@beehaw.org
              0·
              3 years ago

              I remember seeing someone say that it’s possible they want to monetize using their APIs to train AI on user content. Currently it’s basically free for someone like OpenAI to do it.

    • arctic pie (he/him)@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      3 years ago

      They’re not doing this because they are struggling. Its a common tactic for shitty corporations to do so it looks like they made a shit ton more money and can claim losses on their taxes

  • bazingabot@beehaw.org
    0·
    3 years ago

    Probably because I just deleted my account over there and deleted all posts and comments I ever made

    • nodester@partizle.com
      0·
      3 years ago

      Part of Cory Doctorow’s point is that this pattern emerges with all kinds of companies, especially ones where investors are demanding an outrageous return on a hasty speculation.