this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Reddit user content being sold to AI company in $60M/year deal (9to5mac.com)
submitted 10 months ago by L4s to c/technology
60 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Reddit user content being sold to AI company in $60M/year deal::It’s being reported that a deal has been struck to allow an unnamed large AI company to use Reddit user...

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, they never claimed it was to protect users. It was to protect their user's data from being used without paying Reddit. They didn't like that AI companies were using Reddit content as a free source of training data, they never gave a shit about their users' privacy.

[–] killeronthecorner 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

This is also slightly off. It was primarily to eliminate third party apps from the existing landscape. Reddit want money from users in one of two ways:

  1. Use their app and pay with your data via invasive tracking and advertising.
  2. Pay for a third party app that pays them for API access.

Due to the extortionate pricing, (2) was only ever hypothetical. In reality there was no sustainable model for this for any third party app, even as a non-profit.

The case around AI does exist, but it was smoke and mirrors for Reddit pulling the same nonsense that Twitter did once they realized they might get away with it, regardless of the short term damage it would do to their public image.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I think the 3rd party apps very a nice bonus but considering the timing I'm pretty sure the AI boom was the main reason.