The US jas deployed a lot of troops for avtive combat across the world on the past 80 years despite Congress not declaring a single war since Pearl Harbor. This sort of naked power grab was inevitable.

It hasn’t been able to thus far, same as every other “free” social media site other than Facebook. The problem is the sheer scale of the data that these sites have to main makes their overhead costs insane. To make profit from those ad spaces would require those ads to be too expensive to justify to the companies. It would be like trying to operate the New Orleans Superdome purely on ad space. The rate would be way too high to for companies advertising to ever get a return on their investment. Reddit can run ads to subsidize their costs, but it will never be viable as a primary revenue stream for them.

I keep trying to get my buddies to do a group groom session after we go disc golfing, but they aren’t interested.

I am looking at it froma purely financial standpoint. The inky thing Reddit really produces is semi-anonymous data that is tied to an email address. The quality of that data is iffy at best, while they have massive expenses just to keep the site operating. They can charge for their API calls, but they will never be able to use that to generate actual profit since no one will ever pay for it at that price point.

Something like Reddit or twitter are useful if they are owned by powerful individuals or corporations that wish to influence the public. It is worthless as a strictly financial vehicle because it produces no profit and has assets that are not not equal to the cost of maintain them. You would only buy stock in reddit in the hopes that some billionaire thinks they can do a better job running it than Elon Musk did with twitter. Otherwise reddit stock is just a volatile place to park your cash in the hope that you can sell it for more later.

Which takes me back to my original comment about the kitten stomping factory. It gives value to a select group of people with a specific aim, but it is worthless as an investment vehicle because it owns little, produces nothing, and has massive liabilities. If you want to exert power and influence, it’s useful. If you only care about making money, it’s useless. People who buy and sell stock are mostly only interested in making money.

I agree. But propaganda tools typically aren’t publicly traded because they are a venture that requires a lot of expenses but being it little cash value, which is the entire point of the stock market.

Which will only actually ever benefit anyone that owns massive amounts of the stock. Reddit has few tangible assets other than their data, which is of questionable value at best. It’s basically like owning stock in a piblic library

I didn’t ask about their other shares. I asked how Reddit’s soft power is able to actually benefit shareholders. I understand how it benefits Spez and those who make the actual decisions at reddit, but if I own 400 shares of Reddit, how do i actually benefit since Reddit will never pay a dividend since it will never actually be profitable

I understand that Reddit has value to an individual or small board that can control what is posted to reddit. What i am saying is that Reddit’s value is entirely in soft power and has no actual path to profitablity. If i am Condé Nast then i can benefit from owning reddit. But Reddit will never pay a dividend, so buying stock in the company is worthless unless you are convinced that some idiot will pay more for it down the road.

I understand how stocks work. Reddit stock is just a legitimizes greater fool scam as no one will ever get a dividend or see any return in their investment short of managing to sell the stock for more than they bought it. Reddit is absolutely worthless in an strictly economic sense. It’s value is soley in societial and political ways

Because modern western business is about cashing out the business to squeeze out a couple extra bucks each quarter. They aren’t interested in making a product, just cutting costs, raising prices, and issuing stock buybacks

Ok, so how does a shareholder benefit from that? My company that pays people to stomp on kittens at my kitten stomping factory has value in that in gives people jobs and controls the feral cat population, but it creates no profit for the shareholders.