WTF is happening to Reddit - Demonetized
Reddit’s Cannibalistic Playbook: Monetizing Its Own Extinction Despite delivering stellar quarterly earnings—revenue up 61% and profit more than doubling—Reddit saw its stock plummet by over 20% in a single day [[ 00:06 ]]. The cause is a masterclass in corporate short-sightedness and circular financial posturing [[ 10:04 ]]. The Mechanics of the Collapse Cleaning Up for Wall Street: To prepare for its IPO, Reddit sanitized its platform by banning over 2,000 subreddits, automating moderation, and aggressively monetizing passive "lurkers" [[ 02:51 ], [ 03:16 ], [ 03:41 ]]. Advertisers bought in, driving ad revenue up 70% year-over-year [[ 04:26 ]]. Selling the Lawn to Buy a Mower: To juice pre-IPO valuations, Reddit sold its real-time user-generated data to Google ($60M/year) and OpenAI ($70M/year) for AI model training [[ 05:04 ], [ 05:39 ], [ 05:46 ]]. The Search Funnel Suicide: Google's integrated AI summaries now answer user queries directly using scraped Redd...