Could a billionaire buy Reddit and just shut it down immediately?

that is exactly what search-engines did with each other in the early 2000s and google won. or social media platforms and facebook/meta won. or videoplatforms and youtube won.

basically thats how monopolys are created

Reddit's market cap is $27B; probably would cost a premium of $10B more to buy the whole company.

Theoretically, the new owner could just shut it down, but it's a waste of $37B or so. Could also asset strip it like Carl Icahn did to TWA in the 80s, but there isn't much infrastructure behind Reddit comparatively.

No, because no one would ever agree to give them funding. you think billionaires use their own money for things?

We can only hope, yes.

Could? Sure. Would? Probably not. Most billionaires don't have billions in liquid capital and it would be a giant pain in the ass to cash purchase a company with a $27B market cap and just disappear it. There also aren't that many billionaires who have a big enough net worth to even lose $20B+ and those who can wouldn't buy it just to kill it without squeezing billions out of it first.

Why would they though. It's like turning off the news.

They want you here.

Wishful thinking we can only pray

That would be a heartless thing to do, how will the mods feel special in their lives without reddit.

Yes, I'm sure there would be lawsuits, but you are allowed to destroy things you own.

idk this was my dream to buy an old employer and shut it down, fuck that place lol

Hope so

I don't see why they couldn't, but I also don't see what would stop someone from creating a new one.

They could. But whoever owns Reddit may not be willing to sell and probably doesn't need the money either.

I don't know the exact specifics of Redbox DVD rentals but that's what it seems like happened.

Depends on whether it's publicly traded or not. If it is there are certain duties and obligations you will be expected to fulfill. If not, smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

Yes, why couldn’t they? It would be stupid but again, why wouldn’t they be able to?

Yes but then I will start a company called Eddit

Yes. 100%

It would be a wonderful thing if reddit got twittered......

Yes, that's what they did to Candid!!! 💀💀💀

We should launch a public fund campaign for this.

Yes

Once it is yours IMHO you could do whatever you want. But if you are going to buy it doesn’t make sense to shut it down. But what happened to X makes sense.

Nice try Ken Griffen

Why spend that money and shut it down? More like have people you've vetting to be mods of the major subreddits to steer the discourse.

Sure, but why?

Don't give us hope.

Bain Capital specializes in just that

Inshallah 

That's what vulture funds are for, just with more steps.

Yes you could, why do you think larger companies buy smaller companies (competition) and shut it down. Or merge it with their own products. It's not an overnight thing but usually takes a few years. I used to work for a Fortune 500 software company that did that throughout most of its existence. It's now owned by a different Fortune 500. Intel, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Facebook, etc do this all the time.

Owner could have every sub conform to the r/conservative level. Lifetime bans for any comment deemed "liberal"

Sure, don't why they would but its possible.

So Reddit is publicly traded which means that while someone could own the majority of shares they still can't just willy nilly make decisions.

Any decision that they make must be in the best interest of the investors. So if closing it down is a bad decision it could be blocked by courts.

potentially, yes, but, there's a catch

if the company's public it'll be damn near impossible to do such a thing, so, they'd need to buy up as many shares as possible, probably have a few otehrs join them for greater control, make the company private again, and then they could shut it down

that said there are of course other ways of doing so, by basically hiring idiots and passing them off as great workers and let them make the fuck ups in teh company that would then cause it to collapse after a while, but neither are rather quick

alternatively, they could take the company up to congress (at least in the states, no clue on Euro companies and others), and run it through the anti-trust stuff, and if they're given enough proof that the company in question has been implementing anti-trust policies, it could be broken down and sold and such, completely dismantling it as a functional company, but i wouldn't honestly know the effectiveness of that, simply cause more often, companies are attempting to avoid being broken up (AT&T, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, IBM, for some examples)

One can hope

Say it we me:

Money makes the world go around

Yes, but usually they infiltrate the company, get their own board members in, make bad policy looting the company as it goes under, also all while short selling the stock. This way they make money shutting it down , instead of having to buy it outright 

Yea, but why? You'd burn billions and somebody would just start a new similar app.

Yes and yes.

Technically yes but realistically no. The billionaire would essentially have to buy the company with cash so it was held exclusively. Otherwise if you arrange for institutional backers or other financial investments to help purchase reddit, you have obligations to them.

As long as they bought out all the shareholders, yes.

Dare to dream.

Yeah, hypothetically, that could happen but Reddit is like all the others and it's forgotten what made it big in the first place.

Ever Heard of MySpace ? 

Only if you have 100% of the shares.

They would have to buy out all investors first, but theoretically yes someone rich enough could just buy it and shut it down immediately if they really wanted to.

God I wish

Billionaire boight the logging company that was responsible for logging and deforestation of the amazon. He bought it, it wasnt cheap. He shut it down.

Google search Boston consulting group. They do this everyday for profit. Greedy bastards.

Sure. But the banter is what keeps the fire burning, so they won’t.

Sure hope so.

Google does this all the time. But a company only to shut it down in a year or two.

I heard Vegan Billionaires do this with cattle farms.

We can only hope so!

In general, yes.

I'm not a business guy, but I believe publicly traded companies (like Reddit) I think would need an offer to buy presented to the board of directors and/or shareholders to decide if they like the offer.

What they do to it once they own it is up to them. Turn off the lights. Fire the employees. It's their asset to do with what they will.

That's what happened to Gawker. It was bought out and shut down. Took a while for all it's arms to go down but it did.

Then again turn it on and surf. Who cares if its shutdown for a while

Throwing money away.

In the United States (and I assume other countries) there are anti-trust laws that prohibit doing anything to try and create a monopoly or curtail competition.

For example, JetBlue and Spirit airlines were not allowed to merge after the FTC argued that doing so would create one company that could monopolize the discount airfare market.

You are generally allowed to do that unless a court in your jurisdiction (or a jurisdiction you intend to sell in) rules it anti-competitive or something.

i.e. if Microsoft bought Apple just to close it down, or Apple bought Android just to close it down, some courts are going to see that as monopolistic and anti-competitive, and the purchase might be blocked.

For crap like Reddit, I doubt any court is going to have a problem.

Disney did that very thing with Blue Sky Studios. 😒

Anyone with, say, $35 billion in cash or investors could do it. Reddit has a market cap of $27 billion, and a 30% premium might be enough to get the board to go for it. But why would they? That would be just throwing away $35 billion.

Sure, idk but the first thing they should do is go to r/spiders and shut that shit down, the most aggressive community on the site. My bad guys I don’t find spiders to be all that cute. Take my head off.

It's funded by China, so yeah, probably

Yes

I’d say it’s theoretically possible

If you managed to buy enough stock to take it over and then managed to take it private yeah. If it’s still public then you have a fiduciary duty to the other shareholders not to do something like that.

We can only hope

This actually happens all the time. Companies buy out competitors. Mine the assets. Then shut it down. 

Imagine logging in and seeing a goodbye message from a billionaire 😭😂

Yes.

For a publicly traded company, it's not that simple.

HR issues aside regarding firing what are probably thousands of people and violating the WARN Act, you also have a board that has to agree. If you want to get around those disagreements, you can simply buy those people out, but some of them may not agree no matter how much money you throw at them. You can also force a buyout, but some of that is dependent on the operating agreement and the laws of the state the business is registered in.

Then, there's the matter of buying out any agreements and contracts the company has with other entities. Most contracts made for advertising, like in Reddit's case, have buyout clauses with a specific number in mind in order to terminate the agreement. That way, Coca-Cola or whoever it is gets their money back in a pro-rated sense, but it could be more depending on the contract.

Then there are the debts. If the company borrowed $110M, they have to settle that. Bankruptcy is a way to avoid this, but if you want a clean break and to move toward closure as quickly as possible, you'd just pay it off and move on.

I don't see any of this happening in less than 60-90 days, assuming there are no roadblocks or legal challenges.

Yes. This happens all the time. 

Yes

Of course. But it would be an incredibly expensive flex, and would accomplish literally nothing. The same users would simply flock to an alternate platform.

And lose their streak, I don't think so

For sure. But why would you shut it down, when you could just give it a new paint job and tune up and use it to your liking?

And have no where to watch you all cry about how they shouldn’t exist? Never gonna happen.

Reddit is trading at about $145.96 per share. It is worth about $28 billion. That is enough money to end homelessness in the U.S. for at least a year, with funding to house over 650,000 people and provide supportive services.

This is literally what private equity companies do. An individual could do the same.

Yes but only Governments do such things.

Why not?

But do they know about secret Reddit?

In theory, yes, a billionaire could buy Reddit and just pull the plug. The thing is, when you buy a company, especially a private one, you pretty much own it. So if it’s not publicly traded or bound by weird shareholder agreements, you can technically do whatever you want. If the company is public, it gets more complicated. You’d have to buy up a majority of the shares, which takes time and money. And even then, there are rules and watchdogs to prevent sketchy stuff, especially if it would hurt employees, investors, or the market in general. So you could still shut it down, but you'd probably face a storm of lawsuits and public outrage.

Isn’t that what private equity does?

yes, because reddit is a private company, and is a private business, no matter how influential it is.

Unless out of public interest the government takes it over, or the court has mandate that out of public interest it must remain operational?

Then it has the law to enforce the operation.

Yes, but might get sued by advertisers or other company’s with existing contracts that end in the future. But since you would have enough money to buy it outright maybe you won’t care about that either. What’s another billions in burned money, who cares

"Your comment has been removed for not agreeing with the mods".

Theoretically possible but practically insane. The backlash alone would be legendary we're talking about the platform that brought down hedge funds and made GameStop go to the moon.

Yes. This is why everyone should be using Nostr. It's uncensorable and unkillable. You can't shut it down or stop it.

Yes

Face it. In most countries billionaires can generally do what they want.

Yes Cisco did exactly that when they bought the Flip Ultra and then just shut it down as they thought Camera Phones would replace their business. They kind of did for a while but, now we have GoPros and other action cameras.

Maybe. But there’s also a lot of bylaws to follow. And think of it like this. Every CEO has to speak to the board of directors. Also, any major and very high multimillionaire/multibillionaire companies will have lots and lots of lawyers in their pocket so it’ll be very hard to do something like that to a known company nationally and internationally. Also, there’s a thing called a contract.

Yes

I used to enjoy Reddit far more before every product or company sub became paid shills for their products and services. I won’t even get into the hyper partisan nature found in most of the platform’s big subs that have become a toxic minefield of downvotes for divergent thought.

Of course they could

Now there are rules regarding things like competition they can run afoul of (eg your billionaire owned a competing platform and are trying to kill reddit to drive us over there)

Yes, that is literally how some businesses make money.

They create a shell company and take out a loan. They buy smaller company with loan. The small company “sells” all its assets to parent company and “buys” advisors from the parent company. After they gut the smaller company, they merge the shell company and the smaller company, they have it declare bankruptcy (and defaulting on the loan), and the parents make millions.

Would be amazing