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Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

reuters.com

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Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#41

Post by jtriangle »

cobertos wrote: post #19
pavel_lishin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - I was going to keep my existing stuff up, but I think I'll clear out my account's previous posts and comments.

I deleted all the content on my main account. Most of it wasn't useful, but a couple of posts and threads ranked well on Google and I like to think that hurts the site just a little bit.

I used a rust port of shreddit to delete all my posts across all my accounts, such that when logged in, there are no posts on my profile, however, I spent about a month on and off googling my username and finding posts that didn't stay deleted but wouldn't show up on my profile.

So I'd guess that reddit somehow restored some number of posts, and it seems to occasionally continue to do so.

In terms of hurting the site, it absolutely does. Reddit is a ghost town, and I find deleted posts constantly that google thinks are relevant. It's a shame it had to be this way.

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#42

Post by neom »

leobg wrote: post #17

How can they license something that they didn’t author? Yes, they have TOS. But training generative AI wasn’t something that existed when ~99% of Reddit’s content was created, hence users could not possibly have consented to it. Besides, at least in Germany, TOS cannot contain regulations that are “surprising” or “unexpected”. Using my content to serve ads is one thing I might expect. But licensing it out for a fee t…

People have actually been doing stuff like this since way before the LLM thing, I've bought books containing collections of stories from websites.

Craigslist Confessional: A Collection of Secrets from Anonymous Strangers https://www.amazon.com/Craigslist-Confessional-Collection-Se...

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives https://www.amazon.com/PostSecret-Extraordinary-Confessions-...

Stoned, Naked, and Looking in My Neighbor's Window: The Best Confessions from GroupHug.us - https://www.amazon.com/Stoned-Naked-Looking-Neighbors-Window... (actually a great book)

People can and will profit from things you do in life for free, I feel like we accepted that a very long time ago?

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#43

Post by jtriangle »

m0guz wrote: post #5

I am glad I trashed my reddit posts/comments before deleting accounts with shreddit [0]. [0] https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

I did the same, but, it seems reddit has some capability to restore posts anyway, as I keep finding original posts of mine via google while my logged in profile remains blank...

It's to the point where I search for them every few weeks and take time to edit and delete them manually, after which they seem to stay gone.

My best guess is that they can detect mass deletion and have some sort of automation that restores posts at (seemingly ) random. Either that or their platform is broken enough that editing or deleting posts isn't reliably committed to disk.

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#44

Post by CuriouslyC »

AznHisoka wrote: post #28
34679 wrote: post #7

Reddit's MO is snark and sarcasm. It's hard for me to imagine a scenario where a LLM trained on reddit would be useful for anything serious. How do they propose to seperate fact from fiction?

I don’t know if it’s just me but Reddit is probably the most toxic, unfriendly community I’ve been in. Anytime I make a comment, it’s immediately downvoted to oblivion if it doesn’t agree with the hive mind, or is unpopular. And if I ask a simple question, it gets downvoted if it’s perceived as “too stupid” or obvious. Maybe it’s just me though

No, that's pretty much most reddit subs.

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#45

Post by bjelkeman-again »

AznHisoka wrote: post #28
34679 wrote: post #7

Reddit's MO is snark and sarcasm. It's hard for me to imagine a scenario where a LLM trained on reddit would be useful for anything serious. How do they propose to seperate fact from fiction?

I don’t know if it’s just me but Reddit is probably the most toxic, unfriendly community I’ve been in. Anytime I make a comment, it’s immediately downvoted to oblivion if it doesn’t agree with the hive mind, or is unpopular. And if I ask a simple question, it gets downvoted if it’s perceived as “too stupid” or obvious. Maybe it’s just me though

There are a number of smaller subreddits with good moderation and good discussions. Much of the bigger once are not good though. IMHO.

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#46

Post by data-ottawa »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #38

> worth $60 million on an annualized basis Reddit is pulling out all the stops for their upcoming IPO and it still amounts to nearly nothing. Bringing back r/place to juice user count, killing the API, destroying their mobile site, and that's just the start. That's why they are only planning a "very small float", there's simply no interest. It seems even at just $5 billion, the valuation is too rich.

I'm not surprised they made this deal, but $60M feels low for the cost of killing their 3P APIs.

I can only assume the price is because the license is non-exclusive and they think they can get other big fish to bite.

They can offer higher quality and more timely data than scrapers can, so there is a value proposition there.

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#47

Post by bewaretheirs »

mtillman wrote: post #36
leobg wrote: post #17

How can they license something that they didn’t author? Yes, they have TOS. But training generative AI wasn’t something that existed when ~99% of Reddit’s content was created, hence users could not possibly have consented to it. Besides, at least in Germany, TOS cannot contain regulations that are “surprising” or “unexpected”. Using my content to serve ads is one thing I might expect. But licensing it out for a fee t…

It’s an American company. Bullets didn’t exist when the 2nd amendment was created but they’re still protected as arms. Also, basic internet concept, if you do something on someone else’s property, it’s theirs. This site is also a source of training material for ML and has been for a very long time.

> Bullets didn’t exist when the 2nd amendment was created

Uh, what? Wikipedia dates the first bullet to the 13th century:

> Fire lance barrels made of metal appeared by 1276.[30] Earlier in 1259 a pellet wad that filled the barrel was recorded to have been used as a fire lance projectile, making it the first recorded bullet in history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun#Transition_to_true_guns

Re: Reddit signs $60M content licensing deal with AI company

#48

Post by data-ottawa »

pier25 wrote: post #14
34679 wrote: post #7

Reddit's MO is snark and sarcasm. It's hard for me to imagine a scenario where a LLM trained on reddit would be useful for anything serious. How do they propose to seperate fact from fiction?

That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a reason plenty of people append "reddit" to their google searches.

The main reasons are to get local content, or to avoid SEO spam sites which provide overly verbose listicles or "review" sites that link out to Amazon affiliate links.

Reddit is still one of the few sites left that provide user content openly. FB+Instagram+Twitter are entirely inaccessible if you don't have an account, and a lot of forums do things like only show images to logged in users.

I've found the Reddit experience much worse with recent changes. When you land on Reddit from a Google search comment threads are only 1 level deep with a max of only a few replies shown, so you have to load a new page for each response you want to read. It's one of the worst UX I've seen considering that landing from search is probably the most financially lucrative use patterns Reddit has.

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