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 :-)
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.