What’s the best thing to do right before your company is set for an initial public offering? According to leadership at Reddit… that’s the perfect time to pick a huge fight with the moderators and “power users” of your platform. Buckle up, folks, we have a lot to cover in a few short paragraphs. We dove deep into the recesses of online forums to bring you the facts of a raging battle taking place at one of the internet’s favorite websites.

First, a bit about Reddit. The site is a social news aggregation and discussion website, where a good portion of the internet goes if they want to make confessions, discuss life, convene with others in their profession, get help with problems, and in general live their lives digitally. Once on the site, you can find and participate in communities that resonate with you, these are called “subreddits” and they are the engine that powers the site.

Founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, the site has pretty much been a smash ever since and has become a valuable place to find information online. That being said, they haven’t been without their scandals… and a few of them are quite unsavory. For instance, the site has been accused of allowing misinformation and hate speech to flourish. This issue has even gone as far as users posting at least one open letter to leadership and calling for the site to do more over the years.

The site has also come under fire for harassment issues, including people losing their jobs and other consequences over mob harassment via the site. Also, they’ve been called out for a lack of transparency and diversity all the way around. However, it’s important to note here that a primary reason Reddit is so popular is that just about anybody can find their tribe and say what they need to say on the site. People get sick of being censored, Reddit allows some wiggle room, which users appreciate.

Now… we get to the good part… the IPO and the API scandal that has had parts of the site going dark in protest. While Reddit filed for an IPO way back in 2021, it looks like it’s finally about to happen later this year. And while their user base has continued to grow, and they are expecting revenue to grow… we think there are things that could use a second look. This is especially true since their plans may lean heavily on artificial intelligence.

So, the Reader’s Digest version of the API story is that Reddit recently announced a new policy where they charge a large sum of money for their Application Programming Interface, which is the piece of code that allows Reddit and other platforms to talk. If you use a third-party application to reach Reddit, then you are using a platform that is accessing the Reddit API… now, they want to charge lots of money for that ability.

What’s the problem with that? Good question… because nobody can fault leadership for wanting to charge. The problem is how much they plan to charge, because it will be a lot of money, regardless of the size of the entity wanting to access the API. This has been devastating for users of the platform and the developers of applications that entire communities are built around. And people are mad… so mad, that there has been an exodus of moderators and entire subreddits have gone dark for a time in protest.

Doesn’t sound so bad? Let’s find out from Google… because according to them, subreddits going dark impacted the entire internet. Executives with Google say that people use “reddit” in conjunction with their search terms to help find information. When the subreddits went dark, people couldn’t access the information they needed (now is a good time to mention that Google is working hard on their “perspectives” search feature, which should help).

Given the fact that Reddit, at its core, is a link aggregation site… that means they have mounds of data they’ve collected over years. And, as we all know, chatbots and the AI boom has made data into modern day gold. So, it stands to reason that the company is looking at that data and figuring out how to milk it for all its worth. Getting paid for that API is a good start, because Reddit user data is the delicious nectar that large language models feed on.

But… that’s part of what has us worried… and we’ll tell you why. Data, any data, is not built equal. You can have lots of data, and if it’s junk data, then it’s not that useful. Some are worried that Reddit’s data could begin to be junked in retaliation from its users. While that sounds extreme, we don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibilities. What the leadership at Reddit seems intent to ignore is the fact the Reddit users are some of the most tech savvy users on the internet.

See, since users have been contributing content to the site for years now, they feel that Reddit charging for “their” data at such high prices is spitting in their faces. And those moderators and “power users” who have spent years of their lives adding content to the site… well, they are not happy, and they have the power to do something about it. The name that comes to mind is Lemmy, a fediverse competitor to Reddit (much like Mastodon is to Twitter) being built, in part, by those same moderators leaving Reddit.

While that sounds innocent enough… like we said, these are extremely tech savvy users, and they do have some power to throw around. Here’s some of what we found them doing on the fediverse forums: writing and distributing scripts (pieces of code) that pull valid data from Reddit and replace it with “junk”, writing and distributing scripts that automatically go through user data and delete it in bulk, and even cheering on hackers (Reddit suffered a large hack by ransomware gang BlackCat earlier this year).

So… while Reddit is planning their IPO and has a valuation in the billions ahead of it, we’re watching with bated breath. That’s because we’re not sure what Reddit aims to be in the future. Furthermore, if they nuke their relationships with their oldest, most trusted users… does that matter? Will it make a difference, or will the site be just fine? Maybe Reddit leadership has a definite plan, and we’re just not seeing it. Come back next week, we’ll have more from the IPO space.