I don’t really get how people think Reddit
is winning. Sure traffic is back to normal or even higher, but that really doesn’t matter. They want to go public and for that to work they have to be lucrative for advertisers.
No one in their right mind wants to advertise like normal on current Reddit. Sure they still have users but now you advertisements are not targeted and you basically advertise on a shitpost site.
From a money perspective this is a huge problem for Reddit because for a investor in the current market situation that is not rly something you want to invest in. Remember it is a forum that hasn’t made a profit in nearly 20 years and a relevant percentage (active posters) of the userbase is trolling right now.
It currently looks like a lose lose situation (Reddit and the users don‘t get what they want).
That is not rly correct. They provide the source code if you subscribe which is enough to honor GPL. The part about not distributing the code and not building a fork / competitor is against the GPL. GPL would even be honored if they print out the code and sent it to you per mail after you asked for the code. GPL does not mean you have to host the code on a public site.