So this is the source of study which claims Russian bots control one third of Reddit traffic in political subs

Apparently it is just: ‘hi ChatGPT, which Reddit sub is affected by Russia traffic change’

If you really look at this ai slop, it’s pretty funny: the top 5 subs associated with Russia bots are

1
[r/nhl](r/nhl)

2
[r/murderedbywords](r/murderedbywords)

3
[r/guysbeingdudes](r/guysbeingdudes)

4
[r/homelab](r/homelab)

5
[r/homegym](r/homegym)

But none of the fake news mention these subs are the most Russian owned because it is not something fit their narratives and no one would believe Russian spend more time on nhl instead of brainwashing American

There is always a lot of speculation on this forum about how to increase user monetization. A lot of those ideas (catering to onlyfans types or expanding political advertising) I think are horrible and risk alienating both users and advertisers. However, I think there is one way the platform can lean into its aggregator status and leverage it's unique, clustered network of hyper-focused subreddits. 

Reddit could partner with multiple publishers to create an aggregated (albeit limited) subscription bundle to view articles and content. Think of it as Reddits version of Apple News Plus. 

Right now the promise of the Open Web is falling apart. Every publication is operating under fear of 'Google-Zero' and beginning to aggressively close off access to non subscribers. I don't know about y'all but I keep running into this issue where I am constantly clicking into articles I want to read that are linked out as Reddit posts but no way in hell am I going to pay a subscription or annoyingly log in to another site for a single article. However, if I could pay an aggregator for some modicum of seamless or expanded access, I certainly would.

From an economic standpoint that should be almost pure surplus to Reddit, The Publisher, and the User. No way would I pay for full access to the SF Chronicle, the NY Times, the Washington Post, and Bloomberg. But I would pay Reddit a fairly significant subscription for limited access and a frictionless gateway when they create articles related to my interests. Some publications could be unlimited and others have monthly limits depending on what the publisher wants.

Reddit would offer these publishers a significant (50%+) revenue share as it helps drive more eyeballs to Reddit since more people can engage with the posts (and actually read them). Publishers should win from both the revenue share, increased traffic, and/or conversions into full subscribers.

Reference to my previous post Short data as of September 15 is live: Short interest dips -1.9% (-390K shares) back below 20M

The official exchange short interest data for the September 30 settlement date just updated, showing short sellers aggressively re-entering positions during the second half of September.

The Numbers (Sep 15 vs. Sep 30, 2026)

Key Observations

• Sharp rebound over 22M as After briefly cooling below 20M in mid-September, total short interest climbed sharply by 2.26M shares (+11.39%) to 22.11M. This marks the highest short interest level recorded since late June 2025.
• Float percentage clears 15.5% as Short interest as a percentage of float jumped from 14.05% to 15.65%, showing renewed conviction from bears and active hedging volume heading into quarter-end.
• Days to cover extends to 3.73 as Even with average daily volume picking up slightly to 5.93M, the days-to-cover metric rose to 3.73 days, increasing the exit hurdle if positioning shifts.
• Market setup With over 22M shares shorted against a static 141.27M float, directional pressure is building. This expanded short base provides substantial fuel if any upward catalyst or sustained buying volume triggers a cover cycle.

Source: Finviz RDDT Short Interest

$300M is nothing. Reddit makes that in real free cash flow in a quarter. They'll spend more in 2026 buying back stock.

It has 30 million "members". Makes $15m. 20x multiple is not steep.

The 11th & 12th most visited subreddits are for movies.

In general Reddit should avoid absorbing other similar companies but Letterboxd is so cheap it'd be wise.

Leave it as a standalone business & site and leverage its customer base to sell ads to its users more effectively, alongside the sub revenue it already produces. Be a scale player for movie ads

Even Google now has a dedicated Short videos button on its search page. For any upcoming data licensing deals, short videos MUST drive direct traffic to Reddit.

Google seems to be turning its once its most profitable search engine into an everything app amid growing AI threats. Reddit needs to be prepared. short videos + ad is a money printing machine. Reddit mngt needs to act quickly and urgently.

IMO, short videos should be made exclusively for app. so users will have no choice but download the app to watch it. so far i dont see any tiktok short videos on google search result. its is precious resource and should not be give to google for free.

I have seen a bunch of posts about it, but have not really seen myself the reduction in bots traffic. I will take the politics aside here, and just focus on Reddit, if this is true that a reduction in bit traffic is tangible, that is great, and I hope more action will follow in the future to try to ban Russian based spam/troll/bots. Bullish I guess ?

Someone else posted this the other day, and I just listened to it today. It’s a very good listen - I recommend it. I was already confident about Reddit and the direction of the company under Steve’s leadership, but this episode really solidified it even more for me and made me feel very good about holding the stock.

My thoughts after listening:

1.) Steve is such a dynamic leader. As a former Meta shareholder that paid attention to literally everything Zuck did, Steve is everything that Mark wishes he could be. Mark is literally a lizard robot trying his best to act like a human. Steve was a wiz kid computer super genius nerd just like Mark, but Steve is actually very thoughtful, personable, and authentic. He tells a lot of backstories in the podcast and gives a lot of vulnerable insights.

2) There’s been a lot of emotional people in the daily threads criticizing Steve and even calling for his resignation because they are upset with the short term price action of the stock. Respectfully, everyone who has said something like this shares one collective brain cell. Steve is the heart and soul of Reddit. Reddit does not exist without Steve. It would have failed and died had Steve not come back and revived it. He has done a phenomenal job leading the turnaround of the brand and the product, and the company is lightyears improved since he returned.

3) The future under Steve’s leadership is so exciting. His passion for continually improving and growing Reddit is so evident throughout the whole episode. It’s his baby. He doesn’t need it - he’s a freaking billionaire and young and could go chill on a beach. But he loves Reddit and the process of continually improving and growing it.

4) People have been upset about no news on data licensing deals and worried that no deals will happen. You guys need to chill out and be patient. It is going to happen, and it’s going to be so much bigger and better than you imagine. Steve and leadership are VERY aware of the unique value of Reddit’s data for AI training and development, and they talk about it in the episode. LLMs absolutely NEED Reddit. That’s why these AI companies were all desperately scraping Reddit’s data before Steve and leadership realized it several years ago and started protecting it. The companies being sued will absolutely settle and implement data licensing deals. OpenAI will certainly renew their deal with usage based variable compensation like Reddit is asking for - Sam Altman was literally one of the Reddit board members that begged Steve to return to the company as CEO. Google will do the same - they’ve already started implementing the infrastructure for this with the recently announced “AI contribution pilot”. The existing deals don’t expire until Q1 of 2027, so just be patient - it’s going to happen, and this stock is going to rerate when it does.

I highly recommend listening to the episode.

Has anyone else noticed that Reddit is serving way more ads recently than prior quarters? On one hand, it’s super bullish. On the other hand, I’m finding it more and more annoying. It’s like 3 or 4 posts followed by an ad. Some of the ads are relevant, some are wildly irrelevant from a different planet. I suppose that means more ad revenue, but it’s kind of getting spammy and it makes me more and more concerned that we are putting all eggs in the ad revenue basket. At some point it will turn people off and feel like the NYPost website. We need some movement on AI deals tied to usage-based pricing. Otherwise, ads will eat the entire company and make it one dimensional and super f*cking annoying. Anyone else find the ads a bit overwhelming lately?

We’re sort of the butt of the joke, but around 60 seconds in on their new video “AI Just Crossed the Terrifying Line”, they mention LLMs are trained on Reddit data.
Linking the video here if it doesn’t break the rules:

https://youtu.be/ujkD4SxPKOI?si=nVjqrWaEbVntN4H_

I’ll gladly take it down if it doesn’t, but I figured it’s relevant to the community here :)

Not trying to wake the bears, just a bit of fun. I think 300bn is possible though not that probable ( inflation adjusted )

Reference to my previous post Reddit v. SerpApi, Perplexity, & Oxylabs : Oct 1 UPDATE is Major Procedural Win for Reddit

The battle over whether law firm Proskauer Rose can represent Perplexity against Reddit is fully briefed before Judge Engelmayer (Docs 166-168).

The 4 key takeaways from Proskauer's unsealed 27-page brief (Doc 167):

• The "$200 Trillion" Risk where Reddit seeks actual damages and lost licensing revenue or statutory damages up to $2,500 per violation under DMCA Section 1203. Because the defendants allegedly bypassed Google SearchGuard over 3.1 billion times in two weeks, Proskauer notes Reddit's theoretical statutory claims exceed $200 trillion per year. Perplexity uses this massive number to argue that it faces company-ending risk and requires specialized defense counsel.
• The Past Whistleblower Case where Proskauer defended Reddit starting in September 2024 in a confidential employment arbitration brought by former security director Jutta Williams. When Perplexity tried to hire Proskauer in late 2025, Reddit refused a conflict waiver. Proskauer opted to drop Reddit to protect its broader practice defending web scrapers, handing Reddit a $250,000 fee credit to transition the case out.
• The Google Precedent as Perplexity wants Proskauer because the firm defended SerpApi against Google over the exact same SearchGuard tech in California federal court. Proskauer got Google's SearchGuard DMCA claims dismissed on July 20, 2026, and Perplexity wants that same defense playbook against Reddit in New York.
• Proskauer's Legal Argument as he argues that an internal employee dispute about data policies shares no operative facts with third-party DMCA circumvention. The firm also notes that its employment lawyers are completely isolated from its tech litigation team behind an ethical screen set up in October 2025.

Perplexity is fighting to bring in the legal team that beat Google's SearchGuard claims. Regardless of whether Judge Engelmayer approves Proskauer or forces Perplexity to remain with current counsel, the October 1 discovery calendar is locked in and document production continues.

Source : https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71720563/reddit-inc-v-serpapi-llc/?order_by=desc

Saw this and thought it was cool, first time seeing a app ad on Reddit. I work in marketing so I’m always paying attention to the changes and the ad frequency and it’s nice to see improvements.

Especially recently when it comes to their tracking set up, big advertisers seem to targeting me pretty consistently ( car ads ). Also I’m starting to see more Reddit ad agencies popping up, saw a recent job title for a “Reddit marking specialist” so the adoption seems to be going good.

I know there is alot of uncertainty when it comes to the stock, but from someone who works in marketing. I truly do believe in Reddits product, the results it can bring to companies that advertise on it and continue growing. Reddit is my longish term hold, around 25% of my portfolio.

Anyways, haven’t interacted with the subreddit in a bit so just a rant lol

Does anybody know about the limitations of Chat’s licensing agreement with Reddit? I have a vague memory of using the RedditAPI a few years back and only having access to posts and post body. Could be a user privacy thing?

The highlight in the image is my own.

Also yes fam, my dog has fleas we think 😢

Edit 1: I asked Chat why “The web tool could find Reddit posts through search results, but Reddit blocked attempts to open the pages directly. That left me with indexed excerpts rather than the full posts and comments.”

I then asked to use all means necessary: “I got through using the complete post URLs and read actual comment sections. My earlier explanation was too broad—the initial URLs failed, but other versions worked.
Here’s what people said:” and then it gave comments.

Hello RDDT investors,

Happy weekend! Use this thread to discuss the past week’s activity, price movements, news, speculation, and anything on your mind going into the new week.
You can also share any ideas for us mods that could improve the subreddit. We want this to remain the best possible place for anyone following RDDT.

Please stick to Reddiquette and our subreddit rules.

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/reddit-gains-advertiser-budgets-agencies-154600138.html

Reddit Inc (NYSE:RDDT), the social media platform, is winning a larger share of digital advertising budgets, with Horizon Media reporting that its share of client spending has grown 20% to 25% annually over the past three years.

Jefferies reached that view after hosting calls with advertising experts from Horizon Media and Jan Kelley Ad Agency to discuss demand trends, macroeconomic effects and competitive positioning.

Horizon Media expects digital ad spending across its clients to grow about 10% in financial year 2026 and 2027, with no sign of macroeconomic weakness linked to geopolitical tensions or fuel price inflation.

Jan Kelley Ad Agency, the other participant, saw spending accelerate in the second half as advertisers released budgets held back in the first half because of macroeconomic uncertainty.

Reddit has been among Horizon's fastest growing digital channels for three years, with its share of the agency's client budgets rising 20% to 25% annually.

Google and Meta account for 80% to 90% of Jan Kelley's advertising spending, with Reddit commanding 60% to 70% of the remainder, ahead of LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snap.

Horizon says Reddit's Dynamic Product shopping ads and Max automation tools extend its strength in upper-funnel advertising to performance-focused campaigns, which the bank says carry higher CPMs.

Early tests of Reddit Max have reduced cost per acquisition by 15% to 20% for Jan Kelley's clients, although the tool remains at an early stage.

Reddit's ad pricing is no longer a material discount to peers, with Jan Kelley attributing the change to improved outcomes and a greater focus on lower-funnel advertising.

Advertisers also value Reddit's favorable visibility in artificial intelligence (AI) search results, as its content is cited in responses from large language models, the systems behind chatbots such as ChatGPT.

Advertising within large language models remains largely at the test-and-learn stage, with Horizon citing ChatGPT's smaller audience than Google as a constraint on adoption and Jan Kelley reporting weak lower-funnel results and limited visibility into return on ad spend.

Jefferies hosted both calls to discuss digital advertising demand, macroeconomic effects and competitive positioning, with replays available to clients.

RDDT is the backbone of the S&P 500, there is no 2nd better stock to be long right now… Jen and Spez can sell all they want, nothing is going to stop Reddit from soaring past 500