Reddit is going public, so this has to happen. Imgur and Reddit are basically linked together. They are also not allowing any NSFW content to be pulled by the third party API, you have to use the official App or website to view NSFW Reddit posts in future.
Reddit is most likely a hotbed of illegal pornographic content, given that there is no actual proper verification process. And implementing a standardised verification process would be admitting that Reddit and Imgur are part porn websites, which would also be a bad look for investors.
Its Tumblr 2.0, but dumber.
Its destined to tank no matter what happens.
The situation is that Reddit and Imgur have a sizeable amount of likely illegal pornographic content on their servers.
Their options are:
-
To ban all the porn. Which it looks like they are trying to do. On paper this is the best option for investors, as it protects the investment. However in the real world this can piss off the userbase and tank the website by loosing a sizeable amount of users (see Tumblr).
-
To continue without any changes. This is also guarantees the investment tanking, all it takes is one Anderson Cooper style jailbait investigation into Reddit to destroy the investment.
-
To implement proper verification for pornographic content, like pornhub and onlyfans did. But as I said, the investors don’t want it to be public knowledge that they are investing in a porn website in some way, and Reddit implementing proper verification processes will make that public knowledge. Thus also devaluing the investment.
There is no way to win for the investors .
Why is option one bad for investors? If you have 100 million pre-ban users you can’t invest in and 20 million of them leaves because of the porn ban that still gives you 80 million users you can invest in.
It’s the same thing with requiring user accounts. Hosting a billion images for random people for free is less interesting from an investment perspective than hosting 200 million images for registered user that you can extract more data from and maybe even sell a premium subscription to.
Services that makes the internet convenient, accessible and anonymous are not necessarily a good capitalist investment. Stuff like somewhere you can upload images to is more like a public utility in nature than a capitalist business.
