Has anyone else received the Direct Share Program email for Reddit's IPO?
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.
Got it. Deleted it.
This is the way
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.
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.
Oh yeah. I'm not buying into that.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for that. I am investment-dumb, but am trying to learn by paper trading and reading a ton of investopedia.
bet these shares come with no voting rights.
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?
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.
I love that my moderation and novelty bots that reddit broke received IPO email spam lol.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I ended up getting their PM. I’m not touching their stock with a 20ft pole.
Tempting to short the stock and say $&@# you Spez!
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?
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.
They, themselves, listed it as a risk in their prospectus filing with the SEC:
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.]
No and if I receive such an email it goes straight into the trash.
Yeah, I got it, I'm first tier thanks to my karma level, but we'll see where it goes.
Oh I didn't know there were tiers, whereabouts is that?
When you sign up, they explain that there are tiers based on karma or number of moderation actions.
Oh shit, I think that was announced right at the time of the exodus. When I signed up, there was no such thing. But my last alt had been created maybe 5-6 years ago.
They meant when you sign up for the DSP:
The tiers are (poorly) explained here:
https://redditforcommunity.com/Directed-Share-Program
Thanks for that, I either didn't see the same thing when I got the email, or otherwise just didn't scroll long enough (just went back to check, there's link to a FAQ which appears to be the same as your link).
But what I had in mind in my last comment was the contributor program, which looks like the "Reddit community programs" in one of the tables in your link. I had left in the June exodus, and it looks like the program was announced in Sep.
Yeah - I have no idea what the “MVP” community programs are. I also left during the exodus, but qualified through karma anyway.
https://redditforcommunity.com/Directed-Share-Program
All my suspended reddit logins are suddenly active again. I was banned for 'inciting violence' by some anti-outdoor cat nazis when I posted a picture of my cat with a rabbit it caught. This was over 3 years ago.
I'm going through removing all my content. F reddit. Scumbags suddenly unbanned my decade of content so they can train AI on it to enrich themselves.
You can't delete what's already backed up and can be reversed. It's a wasted effort.
Careful what you post online, kids.
I just got the email about this today. My account had maybe 30k comment karma and 2k post karma. I deleted all of my stuff and haven't been back to Reddit since last summer's fiasco. Guess they're not getting the uptake they expected on this bullshit, heh.