I agree that this process sucks. Do you think it's possible to do 1 and 2 without 3? How could a business that remains focused on benefiting free users compete/profit?
If Reddit had 10 employees and a $5 million annual salary budget, all the employees would be very well compensated, but they wouldn't need to raise $300 million from investors or aggressively pursue ad revenue by pushing an app to avoid ad blocking.
Personally I'm not sure if running as a pseudo-nonprofit would work or not. It's possible there's a cat-and-mouse game with spammers, astroturfers, and griefers that can only be solved with large numbers of employees and high revenue. Perhaps successful online nonprofit projects like Internet Archive and Debian have only avoided this because the don't have the combination of user-generated content and a large user base that make them attractive to spammers. Or perhaps the fact Reddit has so many more users than MetaFilter is a sign sites following this model just don't get big.
I would posit that it is possible for Reddit to finance itself and it's operation without going as far as they are doing now.
However, that would imply forgoing possible megaprofits that VCs wants - as well as probably reducing growth in headcounts and interesting internal projects. So there are both internal and external forces pushing in the direction of more monetization.
I think Basecamp is a nice example of forgoing profit for a better product.
When the recession hits how do you plan to buffer the revenue beating you're guaranteed to take? If you had built up a cash reserve, you can absorb some or all of the hit.
Where do you plan to get a large amount of capital to make opportunistic investments in expanding what you do? Debt? If you say debt / loans, that's just admitting the necessity of the capital buffer (which is better derived from profit via operations rather than paying for debt and the associated debt interest).
What's your plan for surviving a recession or industry change or regulatory hit (which can demand immense spending on compliance adjustment) with either near 0% revenue growth or low single digit growth? That's the most common business scenario, not 30% or 50% growth every year.
What if you have the opportunity to hire N talented engineers from a failed competitor. You've got zero or very low revenue growth and hiring these talented people could very plausibly alter your trajectory. It's an opportunity to jump on. Where is your capital for that coming from?
You can apply the exact same capital outlay scenario to equipment investment / upgrade opportunities.
How do you plan to absorb any manner of business disaster?
Profit is inherently necessary so that when inevitable bad things happen, you can afford to absorb them. It's also necessary for opportunistic expansion and investment, when you see an opportunity that requires a sizable upfront capital allocation. One of the biggest differences between organizations that seize on opportunities and those that don't or can't, is having the required capital to act.
And yet, Wikimedia is a non-profit. So is Harvard. Non-profit doesn't mean you can't have a capital reserve. It only means you don't pay that capital reserve out to shareholders.
> Profit is inherently necessary so that when inevitable bad things happen, you can afford to absorb them.
Some of the longest-lasting institutions in the world are non-profit.
Is it just some or is it all? Honest question, the only very long lasting institutions I can think of are not for-profit.
There are, of course, religious institutions that are older.
Wikimedia comes to mind. They're by no means perfect, but they're the closest match I can think of.
One answer to this is it is very hard because your users would need to pay fees instead of being sucked into ads en masse by dark patterns. And who is willing to pay a monthly subscription fee for reddit?
Wikimedia just gets donations instead because they provide useful content. The majority of reddit is memes and images so people will just migrate to Instagram. A faithful rest might pay, but not enough to reach a $3bn valuation.