Reddit's filing with the SEC makes clear that training AI with user posts is a core part of Reddit's new business model.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/8775123

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 :-)

  • KingBoo@lemmy.world
    112·
    9 months ago

    Even if they’re “addicts” it’s not like there’s no where else to go!

    For people that want a true reddit replacement, there ISN’T somewhere else to go.

    It certainly isn’t lemmy (imo) Twitter is a cesspool…

    • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
      12·
      9 months ago

      You are correct that Lemmy is not a “true Reddit replacement”. In my opinion it’s better than Reddit! The only downside I’ve really noticed is that there aren’t as many varied communities built up yet

      • KingBoo@lemmy.world
        32·
        9 months ago

        Ahh. What about the site has been better for you?

        I’ve bad the opposite experience, unfortunately.

        I’ve struggled to easily navigate and find communities I want to participate in, on lemmy.

        Everytime I’ve asked for help I’ve been told it’s a me problem, because lemmy isn’t reddit.

        • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 months ago

          I haven’t had any issues navigating the sites at all! It’s been pretty easy for me to search for communities so far! Maybe it’s the app you’re using? I’m on Jerboa and it honestly works better than anything I ever used on Reddit! I’ve been trying the Boost app too since that was how I used to get on Reddit but Jerboa just works better so far

        • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
          21·
          9 months ago

          Yeah I totally agree, I like it here but I couldn’t recommend it to a friend really because it’s super awkward with not knowing where to sign up because it’s so hard to tell who is blocking who - sign up to thy wrong server and basically no one can see your posts and you can’t see helf the stuff. Then finding communities is difficult enough to start with let alone finding an active community among the dozens of similar named ones - and that before you even get into the various problems with elitists and gate keepers and wokescolds…

          It’s annoying that it feels most the users would rather this place dies than do anything to make it usable for normal people. We need to work as a community and make it more welcoming, to create tools to help people find what they need and to make it worth while to be here

          • KingBoo@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            THANK YOU!

            This is my exact situation and no one has really shared my experience yet but you.

            You’ve listed many of the problems I have.

            Which app do you use?

      • Makeshift@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        9 months ago

        This is a downside. I mainly was on a couple specific video game subs and some small branch subs of broader communities.

        I have fallen back about once a month.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
      7·
      9 months ago

      Reddit rose from the ashes of digg. Maybe lemmy will take its place, maybe another will. The biggest issue is that it’s already a trove of knowledge, and users are shredding their account history as they leave to keep reddit from profiting from it. I understand why they do it, but it’s kind of like burning the library of Alexandria.

      • Altima NEO@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, so do I, but let’s not kid ourselves. Lemmy has a long ways to go. It can scratch the itch the same way Reddit did, but there’s a whole ton of stuff missing here that’s only on Reddit.

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
        01·
        9 months ago

        But they won’t bring them here until it’s a good space to be.

        I run a community on here and reddit, I hate to say it but reddit is far more welcoming even once you get past the difficulty of servers and stuff here. Lemmy has problems with down voting and lack of participation, and it’s not like I’m talking about right wing politics subs or anything it’s for an open source project.

        We need to make discovering communities easier and we need to be more open to new people coming - that means supporting things even if they aren’t to our taste and trying not to gatekeep.