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Reddit: 'We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base' (www.404media.co)

submitted 9 months ago by DolphinMath@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 295 points 9 months ago* (last edited 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 193 points 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.

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 86 points 9 months ago

But the mods are landed gentry. The gall

[-] SuperSynthia@lemmy.world 60 points 9 months ago

Excuse me, WHAT THE FUCK? 193 MIL?

[-] athos77@kbin.social 86 points 9 months ago

Yeah, and they gave the COO like another 93 million. Yet somehow we're the "landed gentry".

https://www.thedailybeast.com/reddit-files-to-go-public-reveals-that-it-paid-ceo-dollar193-million-last-year

[-] Plopp@lemmy.world 31 points 9 months ago

Not even 200. 😢

[-] fernandofig@reddthat.com 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 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.world 11 points 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

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 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.

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[-] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 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 points 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.world 13 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] AFreeLarryHoover@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago

All I see is these fake fucks with no fangs tryna draw blood from my ice-cold veins.

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_SNDCLOUD@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

Hmmm…I smell a massacre. Seems to be the only way to back these bastards up.

[-] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 23 points 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.

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[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 14 points 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.

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[-] AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social 184 points 9 months 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.

[-] AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social 76 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 111 points 9 months 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@lemmy.world 71 points 9 months 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

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 29 points 9 months 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.

[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 19 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] june@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

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

[-] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 102 points 9 months 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!

[-] undercrust@lemmy.ca 9 points 9 months ago

figuring out how to even make money

Which, to be crystal clear, they have never accomplished

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 86 points 9 months 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?

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 36 points 9 months ago

Karma microtransactions

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 9 months ago

already done and with crypto at that

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 26 points 9 months ago

Battle Pass maybe, since they already have subscription.

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[-] Rolando@lemmy.world 52 points 9 months ago

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

[-] uis@lemm.ee 46 points 9 months ago

Late stage capitalism

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 40 points 9 months 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 19 points 9 months 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.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months 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 9 points 9 months 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.

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 10 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 39 points 9 months ago

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

[-] Abnorc@lemm.ee 12 points 8 months ago

A large manguage model?

[-] samus12345@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

And my axe!

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[-] DolphinMath@slrpnk.net 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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

About MediaBiasFactCheck.com

Methodology

[-] actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago

"Mostly free" my ass.

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[-] sudo_tee@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago

*milking our userbase

[-] paf0@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago

I am not for sale

[-] WallEx@feddit.de 24 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] p1mrx@sh.itjust.works 21 points 9 months ago

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

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 18 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] themurphy@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months 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?

[-] rsuri@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

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.

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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024

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