"at least Reddit can't get any worse!"
“Hold my beer.”
- Steve Huffman
Reddit Launches Long-Awaited IPO with $748M Target
61–64 of 64 posts
Re: Reddit Launches Long-Awaited IPO with $748M Target
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
So this is the story that places like Reddit and Quora would like to tell. They'd like to say that they have this treasure trove of data which can be used to train the models of the future, but that doesn't seem to be what most experts actually beleive. Firstly, Reddit is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted- they were open enough for long enough for most serious players to have most of that data. Secon…
Sincere question: To the extent that "the open internet" IS valuable data, isn't Reddit in the best possible position to capitalize on it? The mechanic of the website allows for people all over the world to contribute free-form content and then has mechanics built in where the content provided is graded by free human reviewers and moderators, and graded accordingly. Not saying it is perfect data, but surely there is…
The problem is the grading is trash. In some sub-reddits the grading is literally inversely proportional to the quality of the content. In others its inversely proportional to traditional grammar rules. In some places it's highly correlated with misogyny. Like how often do you want your LLM to slowly transition it's response to a question into the Fresh Prince of Bel Air meme?[1]
Compare it to other forms of content - news sources and journals which are extremely well curated, digitized books - a massive back catalogue of well edited and well structured data, Wikipedia - extremely high quality.
I would put it this way, training an LLM on reddit is like teaching a child to play piano entirely by exposing them to freeform jazz.
Re: Reddit Launches Long-Awaited IPO with $748M Target
#63Reddit seems to have well and truly jumped the shark. Most of their communities are barely moderated wastelands. Bot activity is absolutely rampant. It had a golden age, but I have no idea how this survives in the post LLM world.
Until there is a clear successor, I don't think we can bury reddit.
Discord mostly.
Re: Reddit Launches Long-Awaited IPO with $748M Target
#64It's kind of... hilarious that Reddit has managed to wait so long that they've ended up shooting for an IPO just after the company's third largest individual shareholder (Altman) created an existential threat to destroy reddit. A couple of years ago I think you could've made a decent argument for reddit, it's never going to have as good economics as Facebook but there's definitely value and communities there. It's a…
I think what you're pointing out is systematic risk for all social media or companies driven by online advertising. You can think Reddit is a good play relative to those companies. Just buy reddit and short snap for instance For instance, reddit has these things going for it: Data - sure bots will influence Reddit but there are still a lot of users today. Sophisticated anti bot technology could help keep that somewha…
Snap is an odd example to bring up, since they seem the most well guarded against becoming dominated by bots. It's primarily a private messaging platform, with a couple of broadcast social media features. I'd assume the vast majority of Snapchat's traffic is between people who have met each other in real life.