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!