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.”
The long-awaited S-1 filing reveals much of what Reddit users knew and feared: That many of the changes the company has made over the last year in the leadup to an IPO are focused on exerting control over the site, sanitizing parts of the platform, and monetizing user data.
Posting here because of the privacy implications of all this, but I wonder if at some point there should be an “Enshittification” community :-)
With all the changes that Reddit has made recently esp with the API changes, it definitely did leave salt in my mouth alongside how increasing toxic the Reddit community had become in comparison to when I joined the community but the small niche communities that existed on Reddit did honestly made it harder to quit due to the lack of communities outside, which is another big problem with centralisation, esp in the modern internet as it makes you rely on platforms you may not necessarily like due to big issues like social isolation etc.
When I found out about this, this isn’t simply excusable anymore and I would rather delete my account over having my personal data being sold for profit (which goes completely against the early ethos of Reddit as a whole but being semi owned by Conde Nast, this would have been inevitable) despite the fact that I have been thinking about deleting my Reddit profile way before this issue.
Surprisingly, I honestly have had no regrets deleting Reddit out of my life and honestly I do wish I would have done it sooner, I’m far less frustrated, I’m starting to think more constructively again and I feel way way less dependent on it.
Can say, I made a good choice there tbh.
Ditto for me, as well. It’s just a matter of establishing those ‘niche’ communities on the Fediverse. The Fediverse has broken thru 10M users. We’re getting there. Onward!
If you are planning to kill your reddit account, there is an app, Redact, which is available on the Apple and Play stores, that will allow you to nuke all your posts before you close it completely. Deny them your data.
For better or for worse, Reddit has a super valuable archive that has basically replaced Google search for me, it’s insane how many times it has helped me solve small and big issues. I understand the logic, but it would still be a big blow for the internet if many people did that.
Surely that just removes the public data.
They will have backups that will retain it all
My thoughts exactly
It took them how many years to monetize their user base? This company is run by complete idiots.
Given that Spez managed to write himself a $193M cheque, I’d say it’s idiots all the way down.
Aye, and that’s why I left. As an author, fuck you trying to monetise my writing when I can’t even do that myself.
Hey another author?! How you doin? Lol
Same as you fuck them.
Yeah, hi!
Can I have a link to your work?
Gotta buy me dinner first! Lol
Jokes aside I’m fairly private when I’m not so I tend to not openly share my writing. I’m building up for when I retire from corporate IT to unleash a lifetime of it.
I did that, too. I published my first novel in 2019 after leaving my career as a UX designer/softwaredev/db admin/etc.
Hit me when you’re ready, no matter how many years that is – I’d love to read your stuff.
May i see both of your works?? Id love to give em a read!
I’m wondering how many open WriteFreely instances there are.
They permabanned my 14yo account because my anti-nazi rhetoric was “encouraging violence.” I guess Nazis are a class of humans dumb enough to give them money so they don’t want to scare them off. The post that got me banned had more than 60 up votes when it was deleted and I was permabanned. A reply post in the same vein was not deleted.
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Honest question: deleted comments might be just hidden and still up for sale, do people know if GDPR can come to the rescue here?
To be fair, advocating violence on any platform will not get you very far even if the idea is justified, eg) nazis
Curiously, Nazis seem to get away doing just that, under their clear name even! Reported a few of those on Twitter a while ago before Elons takeover. Got a message that the reports are unwarranted and if I continued to make them they’d disable my ability to report.
I asked what Eisenhower would do if he saw the Nazi marchers in Wisconsin and had ready access to a machine gun. I don’t think that is advocating violence. I intended the comment to illustrate how far some Republicans have moved to the right since Ike was president.
Eisenhower is dead. Advocating for his attendance at a Nazi march is nothing more than a thought experiment.
Remember that video where Ron Perlman talked about there’s a lot of ways to lose a house?
I lost my 11-year account because I said something to the effect of ‘If Ron Perlman pulled up and said get in the fucking car we’re going to go burn down Bob Iger’s house I wouldn’t hesitate.’
They had been getting very weird near the end there anyways? I kept getting these stupid warnings over the most petty shit. At one point somebody said respond to this comment and I’ll gild you. I simply responded fuck you because I thought it would be funny to see that have gold, which it got. Got an official warning for harassment.
I had said a lot worse over the years.
Same. This.
Edited to add: fuck redtit
Reddit has long had an issue with confidently providing false statements as fact. Sometimes I would come along a question that I was well educated on, and the top voted responses were all very clearly wrong, but sounded correct to someone who didn’t know better. This made me question all the other posts that I had believed without knowing enough to tell otherwise.
Llms also have the same issue of confidently telling lies that sound true. Training on Reddit will only make this worse.
The problem is that SEO has made it impossible to find accurate information easily, since even “old, trustworthy brands” can’t be trusted online. [This is an excellent article that explains the problem thoroughly, and brings receipts] (https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/).
Great article, thanks for mentioning it!
This is a great example of why it’s so important to emphasize teaching critical thinking in school right now. Misinformation and disinformation is just going to continue to grow.
Literally why I bookmarked it. I’m an online teacher, so I’m going to advocate for adding that article to a grade 10 course that’s used by thousands of students each year.
I’m a student teacher right now in elementary! I try to get my kids to think critically whenever I can. I hear kids talk about insane shit they saw/heard on tiktok (I got into an argument with a student who thought Slenderman was 100% real because of something they saw on tiktok) and I try to really get them to think and actually justify why they believe things.
An uphill battle for sure. I wish you the best of luck.
Somewhat related:
A recommendation about teaching controversial topics: you need to build connection first.
I mean, that’s true of all teaching, but when you start to question the (prejudiced) things they’re hearing from trusted adults at home, you really need to have a strong relationship with the students.
Being an anti-racist pro-SOGI educator in conservative communities is hard.
I wish you success in your career! Teachers have such an opportunity to make a huge impact on the world.
That’s a really good article, and it does a good job of highlighting the issues with modern day search results.
I’ve been guilty to use “best x” pages before, but if the website with the “best of page” doesn’t have specific reviews linked I usually look up individual product reviews for the good sounding items on other websites.
I would come along a question that I was well educated on, and the top voted responses were all very clearly wrong, but sounded correct to someone who didn’t know better.
This can be said to https://news.ycombinator.com/ as well. I wonder how much of this is due to sock puppets and bots.
Yeah all of my most down voted reddit comments were the ones where I replied about something I’m an actual expert in. Scary stuff
I spent 20 years as a producer, developer, and project manager in the lottery and games industry.
Trying to explain how lottery and games work to people and have them hear me makes me want to cry.
Fascinating! I’d love to hear a little about it, if you don’t mind.
Certainly, I’m always happy to share with inquisitive minds.
Is there any particular question you’d like me to address?
Not really, I never paid much mind to it. I’m curious about the whole industry I guess, or anything you’d like to share or set the record straight about.
Oh there’s lots I have to set the record straight about and there’s lots I could talk about, but without being asked a specific question that would just leave me to write an open-ended essay and I’m not up for it right now
The voting system let’s people push comments to the top that they want to be true, not necessarily things that are true.
I strongly agree with this comment. To show my appreciation, you have my upvote. Had I only agreed a little bit, I might have not voted at all. If that comment had made me angry, I might have downvoted.
Actually calling these things votes instead of likes makes a lot of sense. I might not like a comment, but I might want it to be higher. I might not hate another comment, but I might want it to be lower because of other reasons.
There’s also the issue of reddit comment sorting being entirely dominated by time. In something like 90% of posts, the top comment is one of the first five. Literally all you have to do is just comment first, and it’ll likely be the top.
This tends to give more influence to people who spend more time on it and write more. And they are less likely to be subject matter experts.
Because it’s like old forums where the first person to comment gets engagement
Some of the better subreddits tried to mix it up and change how this affected upvotes. There was Muxing,…etc etc… But then,… Spez came in (back) and didn’t give af about anything at all except money.
First time I’m hearing about this, can you give any links? Maybe we could use something similar in lemmy
Muxing upvotes , “balances”, etc.
Even hiding all upvotes of every comment thread until ~12 hrs after posting.
I noticed from the beginning that Lemmy’s default comment sorting improves visibility of a variety of comments including newer ones. Gee, I wonder who could have helped make it that way ;)
Over the years I ended up getting a Reddit habit of replying to one of the top comments so that it could attain some visibility. I still do sometimes but less often on Lemmy.
Downvoting was always just fast food validation that you’re better than someone else without having to actually back it up.
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@Fubarberry yes I saw this a lot too. Highly upvoted confidently incorrect comments, with the real answer or an answer debunking them with links to factual sources less upvoted.
Happened to me as well.
I am a lawyer and I would get down voted for posts explaining the law that contained citations to the actual applicable statute if people didn’t like the statute. Using reddit up votes as a measure of correctness is fundamentally a dumb idea.
@collapse_already yeah Reddit also tended to mistake explanation for agreement and savagely downvote it.
but sounded correct to someone who didn’t know better
specious /spē′shəs/ adjective
Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious. "a specious argument."and then the real answer will be hidden or something silly, or in some cases where money is involved the correct answer might have been removed
“Early Stages?” You’ve got AI mining your data. The Lions have already come and gone. The hyenas and other scavengers are picking over the scraps, now.
They mean that they havent made money on it (yet)
They have probably only provided a small amount of available data, and have much more data, of different type.
Yes we’ve got the data, but now we need it from different angles!
Posting here because of the privacy implications of all this, but I wonder if at some point there should be an “Enshittification” community :-)
There is, its called [email protected]
Just subscribed, thanks a lot.
Aaron Schwartz is rolling in his grave
When I go to some reddit posts on Mobile now (like from a Google search, that’s the only way I end up at reddit anymore), it tells me “this content is unmoderated” and gives me a choice to either navigate away or install the Reddit app. Fuck that noise.
Try this, in either Bing/Copilot AI or Google Gemini: Start your prompt with “According to Reddit”, then do your search like you would by using search alone.
The AI of your choice will scrape the posts and give you a nice summary of whatever you were searching for - no need to ever touch Reddit directly.
For me, this works better with Copilot, YMMV.
Example: “According to Reddit, what is the best mechanical keyboard brand to use for touch typing?”
or i can just add “site:reddit.com” to a normal search. meh.
Absolutely! What I am suggesting here is: since Reddit is so gung ho on AI, use the AI to bring them to their knees, and have some fun while doing it. 😬
how exactly do you think that would bring reddit to their knees?
Does that allow you to bypass the “open in app or navigate away” wall?
I never see that because all my devices are setup to redirect to old.reddit.com
Change the URL to old.reddit.com as the domain
Fuck u/spez
“Pay-Per-Click”, is all this is when you break it down to its basest.
Narwhal developers have come out and said that they have to pay beforehand for clicks to the API—- what absolute bullshit Reddit and Spez are bringing to the trough. Spez killed reddit—- calling it now; a slow painful lingering shitty death.
People will not put up with it once they know what is really going on.
Let em know. “Pay-Per-Click” will not stand.
People will not know what is really going on as they do not care. Reddit will continue to exist.
Ah
Yes
I know Fark and /. and MySpace, and still exist
I do think it’s interesting that a lot of people seem to think AI is going to take away jobs but understanding AI just a tiny fraction, it seems like the things that are threatened are one that were already micro serviced away like internet search.
We use search everyday and having the best search engine means being the best tech company. These companies are in a race to topple Googles search dominance through providing AI as a service. There’s money in them hills if you can train an AI to recommend when and where to go buy the newest shiny thing that solves all your problems.
monetizing the most racist community outside of twitter what could go wrong?
???
Something something sweet summer childrens
“we are in the early stages of monetizing our user base,”
If anyone on Reddit reads that and stays there willingly they are an idiot. Not they weren’t idiots for staying after the API changes but now they are even bigger idiots.
