Technology

some other article these days said they’re going to sell everything to AI services that are going to train themselves on Reddit for a lot of dollars. Would this be enough to keep them afloat?

That's an interesting question. It was some deal with Google, to help train Google's AI. Honestly, Google probably grabbed much of what they needed for their AI while the APIs were still open, but I can still see things Google should want from reddit. First off, just on the "helping with AI" front, they'd be interested in ongoing data for Google's AI; more importantly, some kind of exclusivity to limit the amount of data other AI companies can get from reddit.

Other data they'd want: given the noticable-even-to-muggles decline in search results during the APIcalypse, I'm certain that Google wants continued access to reddit's data for their search engine (and again, some manner of limiting other companies access to that data).

As a final, admittedly paranoid thought: I'm sure Google would love access to reddit's non-public data: the IP addresses of various accounts could be used to flesh out consumer profiles, comments you made could narrow down your actual identity, upvotes and downvotes reveal your opinions, what you clicked through to reveals things of interest, etc. Yeah, they probably have a bunch of that already, but this would strengthen and increase the quality of the data that they have.

But I don't see Google really making a huge investment into reddit, either. Reddit is too toxic for a corporate giant, and their corporate cultures are almost literally polar opposites. They'll buy the data, but they're not going to fairy-godmother reddit, or give it anything except the minimum number of dollars to get the data that they want.