Has anyone else received the Direct Share Program email for Reddit's IPO?
I got an email from reddit to the address for one of my old Reddit logins. The text, in part, when visiting the URL they provided (had to be logged in, not all of my old handles could see it):
Yes, it's really happening this time, and as we take the next step toward becoming a public company, we're inviting all eligible redditors to participate in Reddit's IPO.
“Eligible” you note skeptically? Yes. Unfortunately, there are a ton of imposed legal restrictions defining when, who, and how we do this. So while our goal is to give all redditors the same access to stock as institutional investors (why should they have all the fun?), our lawyercats tell us we must follow specific rules listed below.
Our Directed Share Program (“DSP”) is set up to let eligible users and moderators own a piece of Reddit by purchasing Reddit stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. We will offer this opportunity to as many redditors as we are able to accommodate, and the number of people who can participate is limited.
Just out of curiosity, I poked my head in and saw they'd sent the same message directly to my Reddit account. "Oh, that's... gross," I thought. Then I looked around at the subs I used to frequent, and realized I felt like I was getting cancer from them.
I wonder if, for example, an activist investor could swoop in and buy a fuckton of stock to sway stock holder votes and the like. Is that something that's detailed in IPO terms, all the shares that are "spoken for" and the percentages of those stakes?
They want to have their payday and get out, there's no way they'd release enough stock to let that happen. I'm sure this is some ploy to convince the most active people to keep it up so they look good.
There's class A shares, with 1-to-1 voting rights, class B shares that you can trade 10-to-1 for class A shares with voting rights, and class C shares with no voting rights. They haven't said, but I'm sure they're only going to offer class C shares.
Yes, and it proves that Reddit has no clue who it's users are. I'm approaching my 10th cake day, have loads of posts under my belt, quite a few in my native language, and they still send me an offer only available to US citizens.
Yes and if you click through it asks you for a bunch of personal information to get "on the list."
I will bet all of my reddit karma that most people put on this list won't get any access, and the whole scam is to just get names and phone numbers from people.
I became active on reddit again recently to promote my game development. Hadn't been on since the API price changes. But with the recent updates to the AI scrapping my content, and the IPO, I think it's time to pull the plug for good. No idea how I'm supposed to get my stuff out there as an Indie dev, but reddit management can shove it up their ass.
lmao. I've got the message on three of my accounts so far, including one that I haven't used in years except to purge my data. Anyone who takes their offer is a fool: they're going to use those guys to claim there's demand before they all take the money and run far, far away.
Just looked, they're going nuts. CNBC has a clip mentioning that wsb could introduce volatility: "The site’s WallStreetBets chat room was the epicenter of the meme stock craze in 2021, as users urged one another to bid up stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment."
They, themselves, listed it as a risk in their prospectus filing with the SEC:
Interest in our Class A common stock from retail and other individual investors, for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, could result in increased volatility in the market price of our Class A common stock.
In addition to allocations made to retail investors by the underwriters and through our directed share program discussed elsewhere in this prospectus, we anticipate that a portion of the Class A common stock offered hereby will, at our request, be offered to retail investors through Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, SoFi Securities, Inc., and Robinhood Financial LLC, as selling group members for this offering, through their respective brokerage platforms. These platforms are not affiliated with us. There may be risks associated with the use of such platforms that we cannot foresee, including risks related to the technology and operation of such platforms, and the publicity and the use of Reddit or social media by users of such platforms that we cannot control.
In 2021, the market prices and trading volumes of certain securities, such as GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., and other “meme” stocks, experienced extreme volatility. The rapid and substantial increases or decreases in the market prices of “meme” stocks may be unrelated to the respective issuer’s operating performance or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, and the substantial increases may be significantly inconsistent with the risks and uncertainties that the issuer faces. This volatility has been attributed, in part, to strong and atypical retail investor interest, including as may be expressed on financial trading and other social media sites and online forums such as r/ wallstreetbets, one of our subreddits. Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/ wallstreetbets among retail investors, and the direct access by retail investors to broadly available trading platforms, the market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock could experience extreme volatility for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price.
They listed it as a risk in their prospectus filing with the SEC:
Interest in our Class A common stock from retail and other individual investors, for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, could result in increased volatility in the market price of our Class A common stock.
In addition to allocations made to retail investors by the underwriters and through our directed share program discussed elsewhere in this prospectus, we anticipate that a portion of the Class A common stock offered hereby will, at our request, be offered to retail investors through Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, SoFi Securities, Inc., and Robinhood Financial LLC, as selling group members for this offering, through their respective brokerage platforms. These platforms are not affiliated with us. There may be risks associated with the use of such platforms that we cannot foresee, including risks related to the technology and operation of such platforms, and the publicity and the use of Reddit or social media by users of such platforms that we cannot control.
In 2021, the market prices and trading volumes of certain securities, such as GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., and other “meme” stocks, experienced extreme volatility. The rapid and substantial increases or decreases in the market prices of “meme” stocks may be unrelated to the respective issuer’s operating performance or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, and the substantial increases may be significantly inconsistent with the risks and uncertainties that the issuer faces. This volatility has been attributed, in part, to strong and atypical retail investor interest, including as may be expressed on financial trading and other social media sites and online forums such as r/ wallstreetbets, one of our subreddits. Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/ wallstreetbets among retail investors, and the direct access by retail investors to broadly available trading platforms, the market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock could experience extreme volatility for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price.
All my suspended reddit logins are suddenly active again. I was banned for 'inciting violence' by some anti-outdoor cat nazis when I posted a picture of my cat with a rabbit it caught. This was over 3 years ago.
I'm going through removing all my content. F reddit. Scumbags suddenly unbanned my decade of content so they can train AI on it to enrich themselves.
I just got the email about this today. My account had maybe 30k comment karma and 2k post karma. I deleted all of my stuff and haven't been back to Reddit since last summer's fiasco. Guess they're not getting the uptake they expected on this bullshit, heh.