not only is the data they have unlikely to worth the amount they’re asking (or they would have made their demands back in Feb when they acquired it), it’s quite certainly not going to make Reddit do anything to change their position. At worst, I would suspect, the data contains some mildly interesting internal Reddit gossip and confirmation about what everyone has suspected for over a decade regarding exactly what telemetry Reddit collects on its users. I doubt Reddit would even be embarrassed by it-- nothing seems to embarrass the shameless.
The only potential value I can see in this action is to further scare off potential investors and to further delay the IPO. Maybe.
Not about embarrassment, it’d be about devaluing the company that oh-so-desperately wants to puff up its value on the way to an IPO. Every little ding in Reddit’s reputation helps. If there’s a single scrap of easily memeable outrage bait in that 80GB, say a report from Reddit’s internal HR issuing a slap on the wrist to a still-active member of the board for sexual harassment, boom that’s another 3 weeks of bad press for Reddit.
This is literally only gonna matter to me if they could proof Reddit violated some GDPR stuff and that they’re now in for an ass whooping by the EU (not a good look before your IPO).
