Reddit's filing with the SEC makes clear that training AI with user posts is a core part of Reddit's new business model.

Reddit said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that its users’ posts are “a valuable source of conversation data and knowledge” that has been and will continue to be an important mechanism for training AI and large language models. The filing also states that the company believes “we are in the early stages of monetizing our user base,” and proceeds to say that it will continue to sell users’ content to companies that want to train LLMs and that it will also begin “increased use of artificial intelligence in our advertising solutions.”

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Reddit has entered a contract with Google, which will license its content for $60 million a year in order to train Google’s AI models.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2962·
    9 months ago

    Remember when Reddit had a daily donation goal to cover “site maintenance costs?”

    They already monetized their fucking users, they’ve had users straight handing them money for fucking years now (sometimes for basically nothing in return!), but that’s never enough for these god damned vampires.

    • athos77@kbin.social
      1921·
      9 months ago

      You know how spez was bitching about how reddit never made a profit? Yeah, now we know why. You know what his compensation was last year? $193,000,000. Fuck that arrogant prick.

        • fernandofig@reddthat.comEnglish
          203·
          9 months ago

          Not to take Reddit’s / spez side, but to clarify, that’s not actually what he got in cash - what he got in cash on 2023 was something around 600k.

          Those 193mil was in stock. Which kind of explains his drive to monetize users and kick out third-party apps: that piece of paper is only worth that much as long as he can keep the stock value afloat.

          • SuperSynthia@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            9 months ago

            I just wish these platforms wouldn’t attract people like that. I get he is after a life changing amount of money no doubt, but 600k is a comfortable living by any metric.

            Thank goodness for this decentralized stuff now. Communities are important, especially for the marginalized in society. There is a potential good in social technology without jerks with ad budgets and AI delusions of grandeur

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              13·
              9 months ago

              I just wish these platforms wouldn’t attract people like that.

              He was a Founder who left and came back. In all fairness, he was never attracted to it so much as he was instrumental in creating it.

              The type of person he is is the type of person who created the platform to begin with…

              Another example might be Jack Dorsey, who claimed that Elon Musk could be the only one to save Twitter.

              In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.

              These asshats are all alike. To get to the point where you can afford fleets of servers to create a service like this to begin with, you already were exploiting people and greasing palms. Other than Aaron Swartz, you should be pretty fucking skeptical of anyone who has been involved with Y Combinator.

            • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              9 months ago

              get he is after a life changing amount of money no doubt, but 600k is a comfortable living by any metric.

              Can’t buy very many yachts on that salary. /s

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        21·
        9 months ago

        I can’t understand how investors would fall for this. For the sake of humanity and my own mental health I hope they don’t. But I have a suspicion they will, and it goes to shows how fucked up the world is.

        • athos77@kbin.social
          20·
          9 months ago

          It’s why they released news of the actual IPO on the same day they released the news of Google buying our data: they want to tie reddit and Google together in the public’s mine, make reddit seem better than it is.

          • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
            13·
            9 months ago

            It would be HILARIOUS if Google declared Reddit shady AF and bailed on the contract

            • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              9 months ago

              It would be HILARIOUS if Google declared Reddit shady AF and bailed on the contract

              Google gave up their “do no evil” philosophy a long time ago, unfortunately.

              • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                3·
                9 months ago

                Around the time they re-corporatized into Alphabet. Probably a little while before that, so at least a solid decade since that’s been completely out the window.

                Also, it only ever referred to putting ads before search results… which is how it is now. They clearly dropped any principles they had a long time ago. It’s honestly a little shocking more isn’t written about how Google was one of the earliest to begin its enshittification process, probably with the death of Google Reader, which was the death knell for RSS feeds and the Old Internet.

                They restructured as Alphabet in 2015, and Reader was shut down in 2013. Google was founded in 1998. So that means it took about 15 years all told for Google to completely shed any ethics or morals they had about being a better company. That’s how quickly selling out your principles happens now.

                Speaking of which, let’s bring back Selling Out.

        • Altima NEO@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          That’s why they’re trying to sell sick to their own tedditors first. If theyre gullible enough to stick around they’re gullible enough to invest.

    • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
      23·
      9 months ago

      But back then Reddit still believed in opening up their platform, and their relation with their users was not adversarial. Their source code was even available on GitHub with an open source license! It didn’t feel much different to us sending monthly donations to instance admins and Lemmy devs now on Lemmy. People genuinely didn’t want Reddit to shut down back then.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
      14·
      9 months ago

      Remember when Reddit had a daily donation goal to cover “site maintenance costs?”

      Remember those paid rewards too, under which it was written that they are, eh, the monetization.

      • Risk@feddit.ukEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        You mean the paid awards in September they just got rid of because Fuck Users?

            • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              How are they NOT?! Paying Reddit money to have someone go EDIT THANKS 4 DA AWARD KIND STRANGER is stupid, and it caused every thread to be clogged with asinine comments like “I WISH I CUD GIV U A WARD!”

              I don’t know if you were there before gold existed, but it was a lot more like… Lemmy. None of that twaddle.

              • Risk@feddit.ukEnglish
                2·
                9 months ago

                I think you’re overstating the significance of those edits and comments.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          Anyway, it was a bad place. I’ve seen it being interesting somewhere in 2019, after that always worse and worse.

          Fuck users or not, not sure whether they could really control that descent, even if they tried.