Reddit: 'We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base'
Reddit: 'We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base'
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.
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.
278You 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.
184All I see is these fake fucks with no fangs tryna draw blood from my ice-cold veins.
22Hmmm…I smell a massacre. Seems to be the only way to back these bastards up.
9
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.
21Oh, I totally agree about the time period, but it also shows why this is such a big slap in the face to the userbase from Huffman. It literally ignores that time period and acts like this is the first time they've tried to wring money out of their userbase.
4I keep saying that commercial, money making clients should donate 10% of their profit (or living money) to the server their user chooses. This is how FOSS services will survive.
1
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.
176I'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.
71I’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?
1
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.
104Ditto. 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
63
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!
94figuring out how to even make money
Which, to be crystal clear, they have never accomplished
7Paying pigboy 193M wasn't a great first step.
7They do actually make money, they just give it all to Spez. Literally.
4
And then they disclose both their users and Huffman are volatile and pose a risk.
1it's like they want everyone to know they are the worst investment in the history of investments or something lol
1
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?
81Karma microtransactions
33already done and with crypto at that
9
Battle Pass maybe, since they already have subscription.
25Pay to have your comment or post be on top obviously.
5
At each new monetization stage, we should once more advertise Lemmy.
50Late stage capitalism
44Reddit 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.
37I 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.
17Yes. A bit like giving a slave a whip to look after other slaves.
9The 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.
3
404 Media – Bias and Credibility
Bias Rating: Left-Center
Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual
Country: USA
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: Mostly Free
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: High Credibility
23I am not for sale
20They're not offering money. They just take the data from their creators and act like their entitled to it.
22Yes.
1
Monetizing means making money from you, not giving it to you.
1
So the "unnamed ai company" is Google after all 🤔
15Reddit 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. 🤣
5If Reddit is good at anything it's clickbait headlines. LLMs are gonna level up in that department.
5Prompt: "How does a spacecraft navigate to the moon?"
A: "SPACE NOT REAL, GLOBEHEAD LIBTARD SOYBOY SHEEPLE."
3
Seems to be one of many from what I’ve read.
4
*milking our userbase
11Question: 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?
7Basically 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.
4Yeah. 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.
1Reddit has a ton more content though.
Lemmy just has a lot of vintage memes
1Agreed.
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.
1
"We are in the late stages of having a user base"
6sounds like a good class action lawsuit...
4This might be the first stock I ever short.
4