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Can Reddit Survive Its Own IPO?
When thousands of subreddits went dark in protest, it exposed the tension at the core of Reddit. Is the web’s most reliably human forum a gold mine for investors, or an old-fashioned dumpster fire?
In the months since the rebellion, WIRED has spoken with more than 60 people—moderators and Reddit employees or contractors, both current and former, across engineering, sales, policy, security, partnerships, product, recruiting, and data science—most of whom requested anonymity to protect job prospects and reveal confidential information. So it’s no surprise that users and mods are worried that this beautiful, messy, maddening thicket of humanity is going to disappear in one way or another—whether by becoming monocultural and lame and boringly profitable or by turning into a capitalist scammer hellscape that eats through communities like battery acid. “The best businesses to invest in are the ones everyone seems to hate, but they keep using,” says Noor Al, a mod for the stock tips forum r/wallstreetbets—the subreddit of self-described “degenerates” that famously brought Wall Street titans to their knees by driving up the share price of retailer GameStop in 2021.
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