Spyke

Reddit’s 50% plunge fails to entice dip buyers as growth slows

Summary

Reddit shares have dropped 50% from their February peak, when the stock had soared over 500% from its $34 IPO price last March.

Much of the early enthusiasm came from AI-related deals allowing Reddit’s content to be used for training models, but recent doubts about long-term growth in the AI sector have dimmed that optimism.

Analysts remain skeptical and some call the stock “super overvalued,” noting Reddit still is not making any money.

Market uncertainty and early investor sell-offs continue to weigh on Reddit and the broader tech sector.

Non-paywall link

Reddit’s 50% plunge fails to entice dip buyers as growth slowshttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-28/reddit-s-50-plunge-fails-to-entice-dip-buyers-as-growth-slowsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world

Yep it's been slowly declining for years. There's no coming back from what a shithole it now is

36
sh.itjust.works

Elon just sold Twitter to xAI for 33B, Reddit bastards can probably do similar. Some dumbfuck at Google or Microsoft will probably buy it.

13
LimeZestreply
discuss.tchncs.de

xAI is Elon’s AI company. I don’t think the value at which he is willing to sell his one company to his other company applies much to anything outside of Musk’s companies.

16

In fact him selling it to himself shows the price is probably inflated

10
Bristingrreply
lemm.ee

Link to this? There hasn't been anything in the news about such a sale.

3

plenty of news about it. but it is just elon giving his company to another company. Like facebook to meta or google to alphabet.

The funniest thing about it is, he valued twitter at 3/4th of what he bought it for.

9

We said the same thing about Facebook 15 years ago. Look at them now. Still twitching proudly with the vigour of youth while their teeth are falling out and their flesh is rotting.

13
lemmy.world

Bye bye....officially deleted my reddit account. Enough interaction on here I can 100% make the plunge now. Sad because I have been there so long. But I rememeber when digg died, and its time to move on.

29
foggyreply
lemmy.world

I was there for diggs death. I was a young college student.

I held off on Reddit and enjoyed a lack of that style of addiction for like 2 years. Then slowly reddit consumed me.

I haven't been back for anything but porn since the API-pocalypse.

17

It's getting better. Not nearly as much content but also not nearly as much only fans click bait.

So it's ok, but reddits quantity has Lemmy's quality beaten.

5
lemmy.world

Lets take a platform driven by community participation and ostracize community users. Yeah that'll work out well.

Reddit getting Digged and me likey.

179
lemmy.world

That is a deep cut reference. They are relaunching as an AI play.

That will bring back the people who were providing the free content.

(/s on the last part)

39

Seriously. I remember Digg. My life's social media path has been slashdot->digg->reddit->lemmy.

I was there! I saw it all!

9

Yep the train from being offered early access to their IPO as a "power user" to a permanent account ban did not take long.

So here I am

23

yep they will, it'll be grok running 99% of twitter and 95% of reddit in the next 5 years. (and those numbers are probably already near there)

7
lemmy.world

Aww, did Spez trade the family cow for some "magic" beans?

Good luck rebuilding the farm now, buddy.

127

My parting message to Spez when I changed all my posts was, "Enjoy the IPO asshat!" While I wish I could update that message, it'll still do. xD

34

hi i am the human male, called spez, i was birthed from a alien space ship , and hatched from an egg and sent to earth to manipulate the populace.

6

I remember the early days of Reddit when it really felt like a community project. Back then, they had the goodwill necessary that Redditors would have personally financed a chunk of the costs of running particular Subreddits. Not anymore. That goodwill is gone.

100

something something live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

3
lemmy.today

The censorship going on there is crazy. I understand a site needs to tamp down on violent rhetoric but they crossed the line into absurdity. They banned me for calling out the racism in the GOP platform.

88
lemmy.ca

You sound like a far left lunatic. Welcome to Lemmy!

59
imviireply
lemmy.ca

Same. 11 year old account got banned for saying something. I'm not even entirely sure what it was. They deleted it and gave me the finger.

Fine with me.

24
lemmy.today

They'll sweep ban entire comment sections of a submission they don't approve of and they're using AI to do it, so there are lots of false positives and dubious reasoning. They'll send you a message lecturing you on your behavior but delete your comment so you're left with only a vague idea of what they're referring to.

19

I got a 15 year old account banned for logging in via tor... they run a tor website for tor access on the tor network lmfao.

9
lemmy.ca

But joke aside, socialism and Marx aren't bad words around here. ☺️

9

Marx never bathed and had boils all over his body

Typical wook beggar

4

I want to see the comedy-of-errors timeline where Luigi beats the rap based on a technicality or jury nullification....He finally gets out of jail....Then he immediately does it again.

5
lythiumreply
lemm.ee

Thanks! I came from Reddit too. Looking for a safer place to stay in touch with the community. Are we allowed to say the name of Mario's brother here?

14

You can not only say Luigi, but you can also say that you wished it had started a trend.

17
lemm.ee

Just keep in mind, "it's called the Fediverse because it's crawling with Feds."

Don't get stupid.

2

Nice lol. Feds love the avg worker, no way they giving up my tax dollars.

1

The basic rule is that you can say what you want (and people can call you what they want for it!).

It would be polite to self moderate to an extent. No point getting the instance owners in to legal hot water. That's a massively higher bar than Reddit has set however. Chatting about and admiring Luigi is completely fine.

9

I have to admit I never thought they would punish users for simply upvoting content that went against their corporate overlords' interests. True thought policing.

30

Reddit. Free speech*

*only if your free speech aligns with our interests.

18

they are tamping down on the wrong kind of content, anything that disagree with israel, luigis incarceration, or elon and trump is an auto ban.

9
lemmy.world

Spez fundamentally misunderstands what Reddit is and who it belongs to: the people making the posts and providing the content. The more he alienates the users, the less value Reddit will have. He's shot himself in the foot and he's getting ready to fire again.

87
lemmy.world

Oh he does, he just doesn’t care.

The line goes up, then you sell out to some anticompetitive behemoth to eat before it implodes. That’s how it works.

38
fedia.io

It's not just the AI bubble, it's a distinct lack of faith in Huffman and as a CEO. He's not forward-thinking enough, he hasn't understood where the company's value lies, and he's ridiculously distracted by the latest shiny tech things (reddit NFT avatars, reddit crypto, reddit AI).

I fully expect Google to buy reddit at some point, exclusively harvesting all the info for their search engine, all the content for their AI models, and all the submission/view/voting data for their user profiles (what are you interested in, what do you think of these concepts, where are you connecting from, here are more ads we can send you, and these are arguments that might sway you in purchasing or other decisions).

64

If Google weren't under antitrust pressure, I think that would have already happened.

In many ways, a Google owner would probably make Reddit better for a while. Google cares a lot more about the data people are generating than making the site itself profitable. They could afford to run it at a loss for years, whereas Reddit investors want to ensure they make money soon.

But, I'm glad it might not happen. Then again, who knows what will happen to Google and antitrust in the Trump admin, where bribery is now perfectly legal.

5

He listens to swatsticars guy why would any care any more

16
lemm.ee

If you deleted your content, reminder to go back and check it again. Despite running a deletion from my GDPR export data, yesterday I noticed a bunch of comments suddenly showing up on my account that weren't there before so I i had to rerun the deletion.

55

I'm not sure. If you can log in, probably. You can try a GDPR request, but reddit has refused to delete data under GDPR, saying deleting your name off posts and comments is sufficient.

11

Should also go back and check to see if you were unbanned. I was banned during the API purge, for mass editing+deleting my comments. First automod banned me from various pro-Spez subs when I started editing my old comments. Then when I repeated the edit+delete with my second/third/etc accounts, it “permanently” banned them site wide for ban evasion.

Went back a little while later, and all of my accounts were magically unbanned and all of the edits+deletes were undone. The benign explanation is likely that the ban(s) prevented any of the edits from actually committing. But the more tinfoil-hat explanation is that the admins want the site to look more active, so they rolled back bans so old content was still available and their user count appeared higher than reality.

14

it does explain why you could comment in subs you were banned years ago. i heard at least from the modhelp sub that permabans were supposodely to be 1-year before it gets unbanned, obvious repeat offendors get a lifetime ban(the spammers excessive account bottings). but thing is some subs dont update thier filters so they can ban you again, and trigger a sitewide ban.

3
mander.xyz

There's a non-malicious reason for this - if you used a script based on interacting with the website, when subreddits went hidden, it actually hidden your own comments from you. So they aren't visible to automated scripts and then when subreddits go visible again, suddenly it looks like comments "came back".

8
jaybonereply
lemmy.zip

And this is compliant with GDPR?

“Your stuff was hidden when you made the delete request. But then later we made it un-hidden so oh well 🤷”

14

No, because what he's describing is a self-run comment editing and deleting script.

GDPR account deletion works very differently.

Note I'm not defending Reddit here, as much as anything it's advice for anyone (like me) who has to go back and re-run the script every few months because of those brave people whose form of protest is very temporarily inconveniencing themselves.

10

i noticed when i deleted my primary comments, it was ommiting other posts, like controversial.

5

Is there a way I as an american can delete all my posts from my banned accounts?

2

Who could have foreseen that banning all the highly active, long-term accounts in the same month would have a negative effect? Now they can live with all their bots, puns, Russian Karma Farmers, novelty accounts, and trolls.

15
cephreply
lemmy.world

Yeah, same here. It took a few things over time to ultimately get me to leave, but my finding out many of my comments were being shadow-removed was it.

9

I commented on a niche sub a few days ago, and it got shadow removed by the mod, don't even show up as a violation on the inbox, then it triggered a "suspicious activity on account ban, until I change password", also because I used a Firefox fork instead of the chromium browser

5
lemm.ee

A "dip" is when the stock goes back up. This is a correction

41
slrpnk.net

Their only utility now is in five year old comment threads discussing niche topics, and that can only stay relevant so long.

41
lemmy.hogru.ch

Though half the time it's

deleted

thanks that really solved my problem, you're amazing!

I still have mixed feelings about deleting one's whole comment history, though i also did that when I left reddit. it's the right thing to do, but the amount of information lost because of greedy leadership is super sad.

13
grrgylereply
slrpnk.net

I still have mixed feelings about deleting one’s whole comment history, though i also did that when I left reddit.

Same. I also did that. Mass edits + delete. I wish there was a way we could collectively move all that history to a non-commercial platform.

it’s the right thing to do, but the amount of information lost because of greedy leadership is super sad.

Also same. I backed up all my user data for sentimental reasons, but that's hardly enough to be of any utility on its own.

I really did feel like I was participating in a community, and was doing something positive with all my posting. I was just treating reddit like any other forum from my youth, not really thinking how ofc it would become commodified and enshittified.

I feel like such a fucking idiot sucker. Over a decade putting in time outside work, lunch breaks, toilet breaks, morning, evening, just contributing to an IPO package.

6

don't feel bad; you were contributing to a community. all the people that updooted your posts were grateful for the advice, laughter, kindness, or insight you gave.

it's just over now, and we need to build new communities again. nothing lasts forever.

5

Don’t delete your account, scramble your past comments into AI generated gibberish. It poisons the well for AI and makes the site even more unusable by humans.

There is nothing like reading one or two sentences into a comment and realizing it is garbage.

5

Most of mine was on the controversial subs, it was better if it's gone,

2
lemmy.world

Maybe if they didn't ban their (majority) liberal users for having "opinions" on the current government, after nonstop rhetoric from conservatives.

39

banning people for also calling out right wingers and trolls, worst is banning people for misconstrued statements, and also reporting people,g ets you banned.

like one time '18 a person asked why people were calling MICHELLE obama a certain way, i said the conservatives called her a gorilla, with gorilla arms, insta-banned.

they allowed astroturfing on reddit, which makes worst because they are tryint to "look fair" but refuse to do anything about the right wingers control certain subs.

actual POLICE(former and active) individuals control the legal and videos related subs.

13
ricereply
lemmy.org

ahhh is that why so many people are here now? I've been watching development and browsing but it was pretty dead for years until the last year or so lol

12
Ledericasreply
lemm.ee

Half of reddit comments are all bots , and many posts are AI generated

12

That's why I'm here, last week I deleted my 12 year old reddit account

7
Goblinoreply
lemmy.studio

I used to get banned all the time from liberal users too. Especially, when the whole Bernie Bro thing was happening. r/politics was the fucking worst.

9
lemmy.world

Are you me? Because I got banned from every group at one point or anotherc… r/guns, r/europe, r/politics, etc. etc.

Ironically what got my account permanently banned was a comment advocating for disabled access to buildings in r/Europe of all my comments I didn’t expect that one to get me banned…

After that I scrambled all my comments on my 10+ year old account into AI generated gibberish to poison the well and moved to Lemmy. Now I just use Reddit for porn searches.

4

I didn't think I was you, until you mentioned just using Reddit for porn searches... Ya never know! I made a joke about guillotines, bitched about how the Dems helped let this mess happen, etc. If the stakes were so fucking high, then why did they try to Weekend at Bernies "my friend Joe" over the finish line until his brain turned to mush on live tv?

0
lemmy.ca

lol. It's only going to get worse. The site used to be the top place to look something up, now it's just going to be full of deleted answers and disappointment.

39
lemmy.world

Its already increasing hard to find relevant posts when doing a Google search with reddit in search. Most posts are from 2 years ago with low upvotes for niche topics.

This does make me happy

15

It makes me sad. Such a great resource, gone, with no replacement.

10
Ledericasreply
lemm.ee

For some medical inquire it's still useful. But if your looking for politics or news, not a good idea, or subs where there's para social fans of a specific show or actor.

0
Ironfist79reply
lemmy.world

I got banned and figured it was a good time to kick the habit any way.

9
lemm.ee

After the Inauguration, they had a bloodbath in February, permabanning many long-term, high karma accounts like mine (12yrs, 900K+).

These were the members who built Reddit into what it was, and after over a decade of high volume posting without getting banned, suddenly all of us made comments that earned permanent bans in the same month. Yeah, that's plausible.

Now that they've ejected many if the members that made Reddit a lively place to debate, they're stuck with novelty accounts, puns, bots, Russian Karma Farmers, shitposters, trolls, and general bullshit. I just went over to read some subs I love, and literally the first post I read was complaining about how long they had to scroll to get past the stupid puns to get to the real discussion.

Its been getting increasingly bad for a long time, but apparently it's gotten far worse lately, now that they decided to get rid of the red meat and go vegan.

I like Lemmy, but they don't have anything close to the active guitar forums that Reddit had.

33

Can confirm—I was a member since 2010. Got banned for logically going after MAGATs. Apparently, that’s not allowed anymore. What’s happening to this country—that people don’t even seem to have the cognitive capacity or basic mental equipment to recognize the freedoms being stripped from them in real time—is beyond disillusioning. It’s disappointing, devastating, and honestly hard to watch. And seeing younger generations, raised on flashing lights and internet brainrot, now stepping into adulthood? Oof.

12

Well the ipo brought enshitification at max speed so that’s not surprising. They ostracize and remove users who contributed to communities for a decade+ and then replace the long standing communities with a generic, Reddit controlled alternative that only reposts all time top posts to gain traction. The only thing Reddit has going for it is the user content which is rapidly getting buried under AI slop. Worst of all (for the investor class) you can’t really see Reddit being turned into another right wing cesspool to bait young men into violence with … so there really seems to be less and less reason for Reddit to exist. Let’s hope by 2030 it’s like one of those websites people say “remember when we had Reddit …”

30

Everyone with half a brain knows that enshitification and pandering to CEObro echo chambers result in the platform losing large amounts of users or even dying.

30
lemmy.world

Found a picture of avg Lemmy user blasting their Reddit accounts away.

27
SnowzSanreply
lemm.ee

Exactly why I'm here.

All the American rhetoric that gets shared about how theie government is becoming facist but any call to action or talk of action is instantly bannable.

Fuck Reddit.

23

Twitter was one of the SC used for large political protests and movements in the middle east, Arab spring. Reddit probably the last place the conservatives are trying to route out and turn it into a propaganda machine. Reason why sports and entertainment isn't getting the axe because they are more or less the same thing as politics, helps with division, that's why alot of celebs have come out as a full Republican as of recently.

They even allow one to be on reddit regularly virtue signalling for veterans, as if you actually cared. He has an AMa, he had a epiphany once when he was in a movie about the Vietnam war(hint hint). It's not a coincidence he announced his party preference and came on reddit suddenly right before the election , I believe hes part of the right propaganda. At least compared to Jon Stewart, the actor seem kinda of sketchy

0
lemmy.world

I still have no idea why I got permanently banned. The interestingasfuck subreddit said I had multiple violations across accounts—something vague about participating in the Trump subreddit. Apparently, if you so much as post in that subreddit—whether you’re agreeing with them or talking shit to the MAGAts—then go back to interestingasfuck or any other sub with the same rules, they’ll permaban your account. And not just that one—they’ll ban any new accounts you try to make too. So honestly… I guess I DO know why I was banned, but compared to the vitriol I’ve seen on there, mine was not warranted. I’ve even appealed. Fucking hate Reddit now. Cowards.

21
slrpnk.net

You were banned because you were obviously a person.

Have you seen the comments lately? Most of it looks like AI bots are replying to AI, upvoted by other AI bots.

11

You got me really curious so I prompted ChatGPT to give me a redditor style comment that's anti-Trump followed by another far-left redditor's reply to it and this is what it gave me:

Original Comment (Left-Leaning Anti-Trump Perspective):

"It's honestly mind-blowing how Trump still has a cult following after everything. The man was impeached twice, incited an insurrection, and openly grifts his supporters with fake fundraising schemes. And yet, somehow, people still think he's their 'savior.' The cognitive dissonance is off the charts."

Far-Left Redditor Response:

"Because the system is fundamentally broken. Liberals act like voting blue is enough when the entire establishment—from corporate Dems to the GOP—is complicit in maintaining capitalism's stranglehold. Trump is just a symptom of the rot. The real solution isn’t 'vote harder'; it’s dismantling the system that enabled him in the first place."

^ -- this seems to be disturbingly accurate, I can only imagine this being produced at automated scale at this point.

3
lemm.ee

Apparently all you have to do to get banned from Reddit these days is to hope Musk's penis implant explodes and burns him to death from the dick up. Worked for me!

9
lemmy.world

Yep, someone in another sub once said "I hope your plant dies" and their whole account was permbanned for "inciting violence". Against a plant. Hysterical. That site is cooked.

6

I don’t care about being banned and I never read replies or check my inbox because it’s the internet and I don’t care.

4

Its a really weird place during elections, they've basically banned anyone with the opposing view on enough issues that its a full blown echo chamber. People then go crazy during elections trying to get their guy to win and the echo chamber grows exponentially.

3
lemm.ee

Reddit has it's problems, sure, but I just feel like the fediverse is a fresh of breath air.

20

We actually get to control stuff here. Corpo ran shit worked well enough on the 2010's but that time has passed. I don't really want to use any corporate crap ever again. I want indie self hosted servers ran by solarpunks and furries

1
lemmy.world

Honestly reddit is still underrated in terms of social media value but it's a doomed platform from management pov. Its just so leaderless and spineless rn.

20

they already made thier bank by selling thier shares a while ago, they dont care anymore.

5
lemmy.world

Talk about failing to pivot. Reddit was in such a good position to ride the AI bubble. Too bad all of their content had already been scraped. They then alienated their power users and casual users got a peak behind the curtain. New, interesting things don’t start on Reddit anymore. The entire front page is just trump articles and reposts. You can predict all of the top comments because it is the same shit over and over.

19

more or less its going to be like facebook and youtube, a propaganda and rage bait farm.

3

I hope people keep buying and that it keeps losing money. I hope all these assholes investing in it lose a shit ton of money.

18
lemm.ee

Been and deleted every post and comment manually. Do I need to do anything else?

17

Spez and csuites dumped their stocks months ago, probably squeezing the last ounce before they turn it into a Facebook clone, where FB is using AI of resurrected accounts to push right wing agendas

10

Is it general gibberish or is there a fuck reddit gibberish? That would be fun.

1
lemmy.world

When do we think Musk or Zucker going to buy Reddit, and call it something stupid? Redbook? xIt?

12
jaybonereply
lemmy.zip

FaceIt? lol

Reddx? Sounds like a porn site.

A community is called a subx. So you might have /x/The_Elon, you can buy premium or coins or whatever using $Trump crypto. Russian bots are moderators. Truly a magical future to behold.

7

And a wrong upvote gets you a ban and a visit from the FBI

5
lemmy.world

There are plenty of well-funded organizations willing to pay good money to shift various Overton windows. Especially now that Google is so enshitified that people append “Reddit” to the end of searches.

1

Yeah I mean there's that but the reddit demo uses ad blockers frequently and ad-based content on reddit is already probably not that profitable. There's a lot of people running astroturf campaigns for various things, but how are you seeing revenue out of that? Some schmuck buying the wrong type of portable speaker because of a crappy recommendation won't add to reddit's bottom line when it's the speaker maker's internal marketing intern. If anything, it'll just further cause people to lose confidence in them.

The only path they had toward profitability was feeding all of their user data into AIs for revenue from AI companies, but chatbots are also unprofitable and that revenue probably won't even cover the costs to run the servers, and besides how many companies are going to be dumb enough to pay for that privilege? We're talking about folks that already stole every piece of artwork, literature, and news article they could get their grubby little mitts on. Why would they continue to pay reddit?

Ultimately the biggest conceit of the "attention economy" is the idea that attention automatically translates into dollars.

(And they're bleeding attention too.)

3
lemmy.world

Good, Reddit treats its users like preschoolers. If you say something even slightly against their rules, they ban you.

4