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Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by rybosworld on Thursday March 14, 2024 @03:13PM (#39707824)
If you rank major social media websites by click fraud, reddit is typically in the 1st or 2nd spot in any given month.

Best of luck to anyone that buys their stock.

Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by Marsymars on Thursday March 14, 2024 @03:26PM (#39707963)
> If you rank major social media websites by click fraud, reddit is typically in the 1st or 2nd spot in any given month.

What do you mean by this? (Thanks in advance - I get click fraud in general, I'm just not clear on who is clicking on what is this case.)

Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by rybosworld on Thursday March 14, 2024 @04:52PM (#39708826)
There are orgs that specialize in detecting click fraud as a service.

They will offer research on what sites are the worst offenders in terms of click fraud. Reddit typically ranks at the top. Tik Tok is also very high.

Click fraud just means that someone deliberately clicked on an ad with no intention of engagement. This could be a bot network trying to fake engagement, a competitor trying to cost you money, or the advertising network might just be making up numbers altogether.

For instance, imagine you post an ad on google search. You enter keywords or phrases you want your ad to show up for. Every time someone searches your keywords, there is a chance your ad will be displayed to them. Among other things, Google will report to you how many users viewed your ad and how many clicked on it. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you'll be charged by google according to whatever you bid on the keyword. This cost-per-click (CPC) can be as high as $50 for a keyword like "insurance" or as low as $0.01 for a word that no one else is advertising against.

You can see how a bad actor could abuse this by spam clicking on ads.

Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by SteveNuts on Thursday March 14, 2024 @05:31PM (#39709219)
Has Reddit called any of those out as risks in their IPO Documentation?
Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by banana_giraffe on Thursday March 14, 2024 @06:12PM (#39709550)
Yes:

> If we fail to detect attempts to manipulate our platform, including fraudulent activity within our advertising systems, Redditors and our advertisers could lose confidence in us, thereby damaging our reputation and deterring usage of our products and services.

To my reading, the rest of it describes it as a problem they need to keep solving, not one that's as broken as I understand it to be, as an outsider.

Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by somedude895 on Friday March 15, 2024 @01:55AM (#39712447)
Can you provide some sources for that? We‘ve tried Reddit and the traffic was useless.
Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by itsoktocry on Saturday March 16, 2024 @07:49AM (#39725055)
>Best of luck to anyone that buys their stock

Also the fact that everything that will make reddit a "good business" is antithetical to the community.

I mean, how does reddit grow at this point? Who is going to start using it?

Re:Reddit's Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering by acfou on Saturday March 16, 2024 @11:57PM (#39731811)
It won't be different from any of the other silicon valley companies that went public based on numbers inflated by click fraud, but it may be one of the few that gets caught for it.