IPO = Initial Public Offering, where shareholders offer to sell their shares to the public, shifting a company from a “private company” (it belongs to me, you, and that guy) to a “public company” (it belongs to anyone who pays enough for the shares).
The userbase has been always touchy when it comes to IPO, and rightfully so; they know that the new owners will only care about squeezing the platform dry. As such, I predict a new flood of Redditfugees to Lemmy and Kbin.
Firms planning for an IPO go quiet, ie stop releasing financial info etc, in the four weeks leading up to the IPO per SEC rules. The purpose is to give all prospective buyers an equal amount of time to research an equal amount of information. Sometimes the firm backs out or delays the IPO if buyers aren’t satisfied, so going quiet leads to all sorts of speculation along the lines of “will they do it this time?” We’ve all seen this before with reddit. It feels like old news because it’s not the first time, but it’s the most recent time so here we are talking about it again.