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.

  • Dariusmiles2123
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    1111 year ago

    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
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      701 year ago

      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

      • @june@lemmy.world
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        151 year ago

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

      • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        291 year ago

        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.

          • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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            71 year ago

            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@lemmy.world
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              31 year ago

              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

  • @empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1011 year ago

    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!

      • @nyan@lemmy.cafe
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        31 year ago

        Depends on how “free” is defined. The US isn’t known for government meddling in what the media is allowed to publish, which is usually what people are talking about when “freedom of the press” comes up.

        • @actionjbone@sh.itjust.works
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          21 year ago

          I agree, but the line is titled “country freedom rank.” Not “media freedom rank.” So the implication goes beyond what may be intended.

  • @tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    401 year ago

    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@lemm.ee
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      191 year ago

      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.

      • @Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        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@lemm.ee
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          11 year ago

          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.

      • Annoyed_🦀
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        1 year ago

        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@lemm.ee
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          91 year ago

          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.

    • @Pixelemme@lemm.ee
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      61 year ago

      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. 🤣

  • AlteredStateBlob
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    1841 year ago

    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.

  • TheMurphy
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    101 year ago

    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?

        • @NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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          31 year ago

          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

        • TheMurphy
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          21 year ago

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

    • @learningduck@programming.dev
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      11 year ago

      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.

    • Altima NEO
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      11 year ago

      Reddit has a ton more content though.

      Lemmy just has a lot of vintage memes

      • TheMurphy
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        11 year ago

        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.

    • @markon@lemmy.world
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      21 year ago

      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.

  • @SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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    861 year ago

    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?