this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit.
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These valuations on companies that use cloud hosting for delivering video like reddit does is fucking imaginary. Reddit does not have enough of it's own infrastructure to justify a $15 billion valuation. It's ephemeral in the end.
The value is in IP and eyeballs, not physical assets.
I get it, but like I said, that's ephemeral. Compare that to say Meta or alphabet with YouTube. They have distinct advantages in serving their content that prevents them from completely losing out. Then you've got Reddit, who pays hosts that could decide themselves to spin up a competing service pretty quickly and already isn't profitable due to those harsh hosting costs and isn't particularly stand out in its advertising business compared to those two.
Well YouTube is worth far more than even this valuation, so that tracks. There have been many competing services (like the one we're on, and Voat) but none of them have put a dent in Reddit's ability to serve ads to a huge number of eyeballs. I wouldn't invest in it but to suggest it's valueless because they don't own their servers is a stretch.
Everything is ephemeral. Money is ephemeral, countries are ephemeral, etc. It's just we as a society decided that things have value. That's it.
Money and countries aren't "ephemeral", whatever you mean by that. Countries are large collections of individuals and groups united by common culture, language, geography, economies, religion, etc. They're as real as your family or friends group is, because they're based on voluntary association.
Money is "real" because governments accept it for payment of taxes. Taxes are not optional, thus businesses find it convenient to ask for payment in local currency. This creates a common medium of exchange as long as people have faith that the current government will survive.
So no, they don't just have value because "we decided" they do. We can't change our minds tomorrow and shift all the countries and money around because they are based on reality.
Also, its now a dogs breakfast too. Whenever I drop by there, a lot of the subreddits have become ultra right wing and weird or bot infested, where even the aussie subs are pro-gun zones now (despite very few people in AU actually giving a toss about guns).
It went from being somewhat toxic to toxic all over. And the only people who will want to buy it, will be asking for more ads, more posts which are actually adverts, and more BS.
There are so many alternatives to Reddit now too (like lemmy) which are likely to slowly eat into it's market share
The dollars are ephemeral too ๐
That is not important. They sell attention from millions of users to advertisers, just like Facebook, google, YouTube, TikTok, ...
Every single group you listed selfhosts and uses local data centers to reduce transit fees. It's very important because it's how you handle the costs on your business model. Ad revenue generally forces you to operate on tight operating margins. Compare that to another cloud hosting utilizing video provider that nearly sunk despite being quite popular: Vimeo. If you think this stuff is not important, see Twitch's exit from Korea over transit fees.