Reddit Inc.'s stock-trading enthusiasts made it a household name by backing companies that Wall Street wouldn’t. For Reddit’s own initial public offering, a group of them are about to flip the script.

In the days after the social-media company filed for an IPO, thousands of members of the WallStreetBets forum — which boasts around 15 million users and helped popularize meme stocks like GameStop Corp. — voted to boost a forum post about shorting the company, a sharp reversal of their typically bullish ways. Their avowed reasons varied from the company’s lack of profitability to competitive concerns, and mostly centered on spite.

(paywalled on Bloomberg website)

  • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    This is gonna be hilarious. I bet reddit was banking on capitalizing on the whole “diamond hands” and stonks memes, but instead are gonna get shorted.

    • spider@lemmy.nzOP
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      9 months ago

      I just hope they have a Plan B in case of any interference from spez.

      (And I wouldn’t put it past him.)

      • cfi@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It would be idiotic too, cause it would only make them mad and make them even more dedicated to tanking the IPO. It would be the absolute worst thing he could do.

        That said, buy popcorn futures because I totally expect him to ban the sub, remove the mods, or restrict discussion of the IPO

        • spider@lemmy.nzOP
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          9 months ago

          It would be the absolute worst thing he could do.

          Which means he would probably do it…

        • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
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          9 months ago

          They also can’t afford any bad press right now. They already pushed back the IPO by months due to the fall out from killing 3rd party apps so it’d be a really stupid move to ban WSB now. The time to do it was nine months ago when it wouldn’t have mattered because they were already up to their necks in bad press. It’s not like they haven’t been aware that WSB’s would try to fuck with their IPO this whole time.

          • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            I don’t think WSB has enough to cash to throw around to fuck with much. The GME thing only worked because normies hopped on the band wagon.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Bruh not if they’ve ever checked the sub and its probably the singularly most active sub on reddit, by at least 2-3 oom.

      They daily thread gets 25k+ comments per day, every day, in an 8 hour trading window… Its a constant stream of shit and piss.

      • 50MYT
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        9 months ago

        It’s also their golden goose.

        Spez shares memes with the top mods.

        They ain’t worried about it.

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I wonder what the actual karma cut-off for that offer was. I received one, and I haven’t even used reddit since the API fiasco thingy. I did use it for six years before that though and have a fair amount of karma. I’m super curious what is actually going to happen with the IPO. I feel like it could skyrocket on IPO day, or plummet through the floor. They have something really special there, being the oldest social media that still has millions of users, but they’re also openly malicious towards their users and seem pretty incompetent and out of touch. I feel like it could go either way.

          • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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            9 months ago

            I got it for both my accounts. One of which has been retired for years. So it doesn’t seem all that high. All my karma was simply from comments, no posts.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      Diamond stonks was all about fucking over the masses so that the rich could buy low and sell high.

      We’ll see similar with the IPO. I doubt anyone is smart enough to really know how that stock will behave, but expect similar “Hey, we need to hold on to this for just long enough to prove that it is a failure. Oh, my portfolio? Don’t ask questions”