
Ask HN: Did Reddit ever end up giving equity to any of its users? - jimhi
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;9&#x2F;30&#x2F;6874353&#x2F;reddit-50-million-funding-give-users-10-percent-stock-equity<p>I always thought this was a bold idea and yet I never heard anything about it after was this one comment from Sam Altman&#x27;s AMA:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IAmA&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2hwr02&#x2F;i_am_sam_altman_lead_investor_in_reddits_new&#x2F;ckwqv8x&#x2F;<p>Did it not pass regulation or did they just abandon the idea?<p>Gigster also made similar claims and I have not heard anything since:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;11&#x2F;01&#x2F;gigster-fund&#x2F;
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nojito
They just announced the vault. Which uses what they call "community points"

[https://www.reddit.com/vault/](https://www.reddit.com/vault/)

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eps
Aaaand it forces you to use their bloody app on mobile...

Reddit just can't take a hint it seems.

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slightwinder
At this point they should have enough datapoints to know whether their
strategy works out. Them continuing indicates that the hints of the loud is
just the whistling of a minority.

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throwaway2048
That makes the assumption that the user is both happy with the "reddit app"
even though they are being railroaded into using it and that the interests of
reddit and the user are coincident.

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crocodiletears
No, it just makes the assumption that most users (with value to reddit) will
tolerate the practice in order to get to the site's content. Whether or not
they're happy with the app or being railroaded is orthogonal.

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rshnotsecure
Reddit has changed ownership structure significant since these comments were
made. It is highly unlikely that Tencent would be willing to see their $300
million investment from last year diluted at all [1]. Tencent is also one of
the largest companies in China, essentially a State Owned Enterprise (SOE).
Such a move would clearly privilege American users, who have been on Reddit
significantly longer, than it would Chinese citizens.

Keep in mind the telecom connections to add the internet to China were not
made until 1994, and residential was not available even to Beijing until 1997.

[1] -
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/amp/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/amp/)

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boshalfoshal
You know, on HN I at least expected some nuanced discussion about this idea
more than typical Reddit threads, but even here it devolves into "Tencent has
a stake in Reddit, everythings censored, China Bad." Think constructively
here. I am not touting any of my points as facts that China isn't massively
censoring Reddit media, but take these as you will.

1\. Tencent's stake is only 10%. This is far less than other VC ownership, and
it shows. Reddits board of directors are all placed by American VC firms, and
of course the founders themselves [1]. The majority of Reddit's funding is
from individual investors and AMERICAN VC funds.

2\. Reddit is banned in China. If all these CCP posts get so many awards,
which in turn provide (probably negligible) revenue for Reddit, it would make
more sense to let all of them slide by instead of ban every single one of
them. After all, these "revelations" never reach Chinese users anyway, because
there are none.

And honestly, can't you use Occam's razor here? I know I am being very
generous here about the CCP/Tencent, but don't you think that when Tencent
makes foreign investments... they do it so that they can... wait for it...
extract more value from them? This is all supposition, but Tencent will likely
not invest in companies like Reddit on the basis of "Oh, a free speech
platform, we can get money from this AND stifle their free speech, which is a
literal selling point of Reddit in the first place!" I'm going to assume here
that Tencent's goal is to make money first. If this is the case, it is in
their benefit to maintain the integrity of Reddit, lest it receive the
(ultimately meaningless) "wrath" of their "politically aware" userbase. Do
these ideas 100% disprove that Tencent somehow influences Reddit to censor
anti china posts? No. Am I at least making an attempt to think critically
about the situation instead of falling on my crutch of "China involvement -->
bad?" I think I am.

[1]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0893288D:US](https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0893288D:US)

~~~
Lutger
I'm surprised by this too, and then again not really. The Trump strategy to
blame China seems to work really well and fit right in with some of the knee-
jerk reactions in the tech-world, which does have a strong libertarian
tendency.

Censorship is the devil of tech world, and invoking the image of our Satan
does not lead to cool and rational thinking. The West tends to want an outside
scapegoat these days because things are getting ugly in it's backyard, and
China is fit for purpose.

