I got an email from reddit to the address for one of my old Reddit logins. The text, in part, when visiting the URL they provided (had to be logged in, not all of my old handles could see it):

Yes, it’s really happening this time, and as we take the next step toward becoming a public company, we’re inviting all eligible redditors to participate in Reddit’s IPO.

“Eligible” you note skeptically? Yes. Unfortunately, there are a ton of imposed legal restrictions defining when, who, and how we do this. So while our goal is to give all redditors the same access to stock as institutional investors (why should they have all the fun?), our lawyercats tell us we must follow specific rules listed below.

Our Directed Share Program (“DSP”) is set up to let eligible users and moderators own a piece of Reddit by purchasing Reddit stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. We will offer this opportunity to as many redditors as we are able to accommodate, and the number of people who can participate is limited.

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Just out of curiosity, I poked my head in and saw they’d sent the same message directly to my Reddit account. “Oh, that’s… gross,” I thought. Then I looked around at the subs I used to frequent, and realized I felt like I was getting cancer from them.

        It’s amazing how much I don’t miss Reddit.

        • ccunning@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Just out of curiosity, I poked my head in and saw they’d sent the same message directly to my Reddit account. “Oh, that’s… gross,” I thought

          I’d rather have Reddit messaging stay in Reddit. In fact I never associated an email address with my account. They had no other way to contact me.

  • _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyzOP
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    10 months ago

    I wonder if, for example, an activist investor could swoop in and buy a fuckton of stock to sway stock holder votes and the like. Is that something that’s detailed in IPO terms, all the shares that are “spoken for” and the percentages of those stakes?

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I’m sure it’s not a large enough percentage for the Reddit community to make any meaningful impact; the current owners wouldn’t want that.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        10 months ago

        They want to have their payday and get out, there’s no way they’d release enough stock to let that happen. I’m sure this is some ploy to convince the most active people to keep it up so they look good.

        • acceptable_pumpkin@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          And don’t forget, these active users and mods need to provide all their identity information. Makes sense on the stock purchasing part, but having real identities tied to profiles… just what their AI models need.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      There’s class A shares, with 1-to-1 voting rights, class B shares that you can trade 10-to-1 for class A shares with voting rights, and class C shares with no voting rights. They haven’t said, but I’m sure they’re only going to offer class C shares.

      • _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyzOP
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        10 months ago

        Thanks for that. I am investment-dumb, but am trying to learn by paper trading and reading a ton of investopedia.

  • misk
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    10 months ago

    I love that my moderation and novelty bots that reddit broke received IPO email spam lol.

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    10 months ago

    Yes, and it proves that Reddit has no clue who it’s users are. I’m approaching my 10th cake day, have loads of posts under my belt, quite a few in my native language, and they still send me an offer only available to US citizens.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    how many active users do they really have if people using lemmy (and therefore spending less time on Reddit) are among the “top 75000” DAU?

    • _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyzOP
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      10 months ago

      That is a really good point. The first time I logged in since the exodus was to be able to see this DSP link, and that user still qualifies? Yikes.

  • SuperSynthia@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    We all knew this day was coming. To think I’ve been redditing for 12 years, and not a single year will be added to that total

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Yes and if you click through it asks you for a bunch of personal information to get “on the list.”

    I will bet all of my reddit karma that most people put on this list won’t get any access, and the whole scam is to just get names and phone numbers from people.

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I got the email too. Can’t participate because I’m not a US resident, not that I particularly wanted to.

    Reddit is gonna go to shit once they go public.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I became active on reddit again recently to promote my game development. Hadn’t been on since the API price changes. But with the recent updates to the AI scrapping my content, and the IPO, I think it’s time to pull the plug for good. No idea how I’m supposed to get my stuff out there as an Indie dev, but reddit management can shove it up their ass.

  • athos77@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    lmao. I’ve got the message on three of my accounts so far, including one that I haven’t used in years except to purge my data. Anyone who takes their offer is a fool: they’re going to use those guys to claim there’s demand before they all take the money and run far, far away.

    Anyone know what wsb is saying?

    • _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyzOP
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      10 months ago

      Anyone know what wsb is saying?

      Just looked, they’re going nuts. CNBC has a clip mentioning that wsb could introduce volatility: “The site’s WallStreetBets chat room was the epicenter of the meme stock craze in 2021, as users urged one another to bid up stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment.”

      I hope they actually do wreak havic.

      • ccunning@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        They, themselves, listed it as a risk in their prospectus filing with the SEC:

        Interest in our Class A common stock from retail and other individual investors, for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, could result in increased volatility in the market price of our Class A common stock.

        In addition to allocations made to retail investors by the underwriters and through our directed share program discussed elsewhere in this prospectus, we anticipate that a portion of the Class A common stock offered hereby will, at our request, be offered to retail investors through Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, SoFi Securities, Inc., and Robinhood Financial LLC, as selling group members for this offering, through their respective brokerage platforms. These platforms are not affiliated with us. There may be risks associated with the use of such platforms that we cannot foresee, including risks related to the technology and operation of such platforms, and the publicity and the use of Reddit or social media by users of such platforms that we cannot control.

        In 2021, the market prices and trading volumes of certain securities, such as GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., and other “meme” stocks, experienced extreme volatility. The rapid and substantial increases or decreases in the market prices of “meme” stocks may be unrelated to the respective issuer’s operating performance or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, and the substantial increases may be significantly inconsistent with the risks and uncertainties that the issuer faces. This volatility has been attributed, in part, to strong and atypical retail investor interest, including as may be expressed on financial trading and other social media sites and online forums such as r/ wallstreetbets, one of our subreddits. Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/ wallstreetbets among retail investors, and the direct access by retail investors to broadly available trading platforms, the market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock could experience extreme volatility for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price.

      • athos77@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        wsb could introduce volatility

        So they’re already preparing an alibi if/when things tank. [The Google licensing thing changes things a bit and I haven’t processed it quite yet.]

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Yeah, I got it, I’m first tier thanks to my karma level, but we’ll see where it goes.