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Reddit: 'We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base'

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.

banneryear1868 ,

An LMM modeled after the average redditor sounds like the most condescending thing ever.

samus12345 ,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

And my axe!

wlsnt ,

So much this

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

And my axe!

Abnorc ,

A large manguage model?

dantheclamman ,
@dantheclamman@lemmy.world avatar

This might be the first stock I ever short.

sudo_tee ,
@sudo_tee@lemmy.world avatar

*milking our userbase

p1mrx ,

"We are in the late stages of having a user base"

themurphy ,

Question: Wouldn't Lemmy instances easy be able to this without many users knowing?

And would they also be able to sell data from other instances, because they can load data from federated instances?

learningduck ,

Yeah. Guess some AI companies may have set up an instance already. They won't even have a rate limit or anything on their own instances.

NeatNit ,

Technically? Probably, yes. Legally? I don't think so (never looked into it)

lemmyingly ,

Why do you believe they wouldn't legally be able to?

themurphy ,

And why would anyone believe they'd stop if it wasn't legal.

NeatNit ,

Nobody does

NeatNit ,

It's the whole copyright question. Users own the copyright on their own posts, and it's the terms of service that are supposed to say what the server and other federated servers are allowed or not allowed to do with them. I don't even remember if there were terms of service when I joined Lemmy... But assuming there were, and they didn't explicitly say whether it or federated servers can use user content to train AI, then it becomes a legal question that can only be determined by courts.

Note that this determination will only apply in the country/state where that court is.

IANAL

rsuri ,

Basically yes, but unlike Reddit which has control over its proprietary network, Lemmy instances would have a hard time locking down access to create artificial scarcity for their data without causing other problems.

markon ,

I don't have a problem with anyone scraping what's already public, I just don't want anyone to profit off just selling the data I made for them. OpenAI is at least creating useful stuff. All Reddit ever did was be the middleman.

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Reddit has a ton more content though.

Lemmy just has a lot of vintage memes

themurphy ,

Agreed.

But it's just a little hypocritical to not use reddit because of this, if it turns out it's much worse to use Lemmy in this regard.

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

Late stage capitalism

Dariusmiles2123 ,

I wasn’t really against Reddit when I left to go on Lemmy. It was mostly to try something which is luving because of its users.

Now I’m glad I did.

finalarbiter ,

Ditto. I left during the api stuff, but left my account in case they calmed down and realized it was stupid. The whole 'selling data for ai training' and actually filing for an ipo is what actually drove me to delete my 15 year old account today

Corkyskog ,

Eh, deleting accounts does little. I am just going to sell my old accounts to spammers/bots after IPO. They all are old and have no emails attached yet.

Hadriscus ,

Wait, I can make money with my old accounts ? who do I talk to ?

Corkyskog ,

During the API thing 8+ year old accounts were selling for $20 to $100 on eBay. But eBay is probably a bad place to sell if you want a quick sale, there are websites dedicated to buying and selling social accounts.

I havent checked current pricing, but if you have an account with no linked email, I wouldn't take less than $25 for it.

STOMPYI ,

i saw tons of shills on superstonk gme what have yous. 5-10 year accounts with no post or any hisotry for say 2-3 years come in and start sowing all sorts of doubt and whining and fighting adn racist shit... thats my perspective

Hadriscus ,

Ah, but my accounts have a linked email. Thanks for the info anyway

june ,

I still have my porn account over there but barely used it for anything other than lurking porn. They can have it.

AlteredStateBlob ,
@AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social avatar

If you are in the EU file a complaint under the GDPR with your supervisory authority. They are processing data of people and especially children here that they have no right to at all. Users were not informed, no opt out, nothing. This is extremely illegal in the EU. Not to mention all that data on special categories like health data, sexual orientation ,ethnicity, etc. Etc.

AlteredStateBlob ,
@AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social avatar

I've made a write up for you to follow along and reference: https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.world/t/854162/Any-EU-based-users-of-reddit-should-immediately-file-a

tl;dr instructions towards the end.

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve made a write up for you to follow along and reference: https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.world/t/854162/Any-EU-based-users-of-reddit-should-immediately-file-a

Just curious, shouldn't that Federate and be available over here as well?

empireOfLove2 ,
@empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

company exists for 19 years.
is still in the "early stages" of figuring out how to even make money.

Yup, that is DEFINITELY a solid buy for institutional investors during the ipo!

undercrust ,

figuring out how to even make money

Which, to be crystal clear, they have never accomplished

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

Paying pigboy 193M wasn't a great first step.

empireOfLove2 ,
@empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

They do actually make money, they just give it all to Spez. Literally.

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

And then they disclose both their users and Huffman are volatile and pose a risk.

empireOfLove2 ,
@empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

it's like they want everyone to know they are the worst investment in the history of investments or something lol

SlopppyEngineer ,

If selling all the data is early stages, I want to know what late stage monetization looks like. Pay a fee to get unbanned? Fines if the post gets down voted?

T156 ,

Pay to Win Reddit with micro transaction cosmetics?

scorpionix ,
@scorpionix@feddit.de avatar

I've never bothered with them, but aren't there already? Additional stuff for your personal avatar?

SlopppyEngineer ,

Yes. And with collectible avatar saved on a block chain if I recall correctly.

Annoyed_Crabby ,

Battle Pass maybe, since they already have subscription.

uzay ,

Karma microtransactions

skillissuer ,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

already done and with crypto at that

SomeGuy69 ,

Pay to have your comment or post be on top obviously.

tigeruppercut ,
@tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip avatar

Reddit notes that it’s screwed if moderators decide they no longer want to do this free labor, and notes that last year the company’s decision to change its API policies caused many of them to do exactly that.

A lot of the good mods already walked back in July. Wonder what it'll take for most of the rest to throw in the towel.

Pixelemme ,

I would think there are still plenty people who like having the power of being a "moderator" and would be willing to do it for free. So even though reddit lost plenty of mods, there will still be people who'd continue doing it.

harry_balzac ,

Probably the same folks who think that Xitter is better under Muskrats leadership.

rottingleaf ,

No, just loving power.

rottingleaf ,

Yes. A bit like giving a slave a whip to look after other slaves.

Annoyed_Crabby ,

Lots of mod also can't let go the community they spend years to build. Not an easy task to just leave. Though i know of some that already partially leave the platform and only occasionally check it

Pixelemme ,

That's true as well. I understand the emotional connection I would have had if I was part of the community from the beginning. It is not easy to build communities and also be responsible for it. I was not pointing at such folks.

conciselyverbose ,

The quality went down, though.

Because the ones doing the best jobs were leveraging the hell out of third party tools to make their jobs easier.

Simon ,

I mean how many people volunteer to moderate Facebook. Once the site is mainsteam and fundamentally uncool to have a job at, few in their right mind are going to give up their time for free.

Pixelemme ,

Yep. But that is something that we have to wait and see. Understanding people has become tricky nowadays. Reddit may as well use bots for moderation and project them as actual users to show a false narrative. Anyways we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Rolando ,

At each new monetization stage, we should once more advertise Lemmy.

xor ,

sounds like a good class action lawsuit...

Annoyed_Crabby ,

So the "unnamed ai company" is Google after all 🤔

DolphinMath OP ,

Seems to be one of many from what I’ve read.

Pixelemme ,

Reddit is a treasure trove for LLMs. Plenty of corporates out there willing to pay. Its just funny to see what the outcome of an AI purely trained by the regular shitposting that reddit has will be. 🤣

IamLost ,

If Reddit is good at anything it's clickbait headlines. LLMs are gonna level up in that department.

TimeSquirrel ,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.social avatar

Prompt: "How does a spacecraft navigate to the moon?"

A: "SPACE NOT REAL, GLOBEHEAD LIBTARD SOYBOY SHEEPLE."

restingboredface ,

Don't forget about the 10 or so lines of "69" followed by "Nice"

paf0 ,

I am not for sale

WallEx ,

They're not offering money. They just take the data from their creators and act like their entitled to it.

paf0 ,

Yes.

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