(Bloomberg) -- Reddit Inc.'s stock-trading enthusiasts made it a household name by backing companies that Wall Street wouldn't. For Reddit's own initial public offering, a group of them are about to flip the script.In the days after the social-media company filed for an IPO, thousands of members of the WallStreetBets forum — which boasts around 15 million users and helped popularize meme stocks like GameStop Corp. — voted to boost a forum post about shorting the company, a sharp reversal of their typically bullish ways. Their avowed reasons varied from the company's lack of profitability to competitive concerns, and mostly centered on spite. For Reddit, which is eyeing a valuation of as much as $6.5 billion in an IPO that could come this month, the scrutiny is particularly unwelcome as it appears in one of the most active and high-profile communities — which it touts in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as key to its value proposition.“Top comments are all negative basically and there's not a lot of enthusiasm for the IPO because they're critical of the lack of revenue and they fear more moderation,” said Lukas Muehlbauer, a research analyst at index provider IPOX Schuster LLC, by phone. “The community is huge and we've seen previously with meme stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. that they can make some moves.” “If it pops, it's probably not because of WallStreetBets,” Muehlbauer said.Up until now, Reddit's involvement in a market story signaled the arrival of boosters, not haters. WallStreetBets, whose antics spawned books and a Hollywood movie, rose to prominence by targeting short sellers that they perceived as unfairly profiting from pushing viable companies toward bankruptcy.The posts criticizing Reddit, often using foul language, came from just dozens of the forum's millions of members, many of them simply lurking. The post on the forum about Reddit's valuation drew about 2,200 so-called upvotes and more than 600 replies, most of them critical. By contrast, Monday's top-ranked post — a user's sarcastic comment on their mediocre returns — had 3,979 upvotes.Comments in other forums on the site, known as subreddits, have been more mixed. Several users in its Investing forum said they were interested in buying shares. Some intended to capture what one dubbed “the IPO hype”, while others simply expressed curiosity. Read More: Reddit's Chief Risk Is Reliance on Unpredictable UsersThe negative WallStreetBets comments pushed back against Reddit's use of volunteer moderators and the ability for employees to sell some stock in the IPO, as well as critiques of the company's artificial intelligence ambitions, drawing upvotes from peers. The critics advised fellow members to short the stock or buy put options — derivatives that gain value if shares fall — when they become available.“This is gonna hit zero faster than my portfolio when my Wendy's pay check comes in,” user 96Phoenix wrote in a post with 334 upvotes.Vocal OpponentsReddit's users have sometimes been vocal opponents of executives' corporate strategy.Over the summer some popular subreddits were locked by moderators hitting back against Reddit's move to raise prices third-party developers pay to use its application programming interface, or API. The policy changes — and the negative reaction — were listed in the IPO filings' risk factors section, given Reddit's reliance “on a strong brand and reputation.”Read More: Reddit Revolt Previews Social Media's Future in the AI EraA recurrent observation in the comment threads was that the WSB forum was mentioned a handful of times across the more than 50 pages of risk factors in the filings. A representative for Reddit declined to comment.In terse legalese, the social-media company warned that pushback from the retail crowd could turn the company into a meme stock reminiscent of the meme stock craze in 2021. Such an event could cause buyers “to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price,” the filing warned.The pushback from a group of Redditors stood in contrast to the pitch Reddit co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Steven Huffman laid out in a letter within the company's filing that talked up users having “real ownership” of the company. “We see this in our users' passion for their communities, their desire for Reddit to be as amazing as possible, and in their disapproval when we let them down,” Huffman wrote. Reddit will be keen to avoid a similar outcome than the one that met Robinhood Markets Inc.'s debut in 2021 amid the meme stock craze. Shares in the company, a platform favored by the retail trading crowd which allocated shares in the IPO to users, soared as much as 124% in the days after its debut before spiraling 69% from the offer price six months later.As with all IPOs, Reddit's early trading will be closely watched. “There has been talk in the community about potentially pumping it in the beginning and then buying puts,” IPOX Schuster's Muehlbauer said, referring to WallStreetBets. “But in a way it's not a very organized community, so it'll all depend on the first couple of days.”More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com©2024 Bloomberg L.P.