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 :-)
Facebook is sooo much worse than Reddit in this regard. It’s a hollow shell of its former self, and not even because users fled. Facebook wanted to be TikTok or something, despite being its own niche successful platform, and they completely destroyed the soul of the website. You cannot see friend’s content anymore, unless you go directly to their page. The entire feed is full of worthless and terrible group posts that you never expressed any interest in. You can’t do anything to stop it. If you block 100 groups, a million more are there to take their place. So now people have started fleeing from the site, because it’s nothing like the site they were interested in to begin with.