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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

#51

Post by FireBeyond »

chollida1 wrote: post #29
blindriver wrote: post #23

This is exactly my point for many years now. Reddit exists because of the free work of the various subreddit communities and their moderators. And in return they get nothing. But the company, the investors and employees will all become rich off of it. It’s weird how no one cares that Reddit isn’t trickling down anything to the people that make the site a success.

Every year, I pay to play hockey. I pay for new equipment, jerseys, referees and ice time. And the arena gets paid by selling food to people who come to my games, sell advertising on the boards, beer to fans. What do I get and why is none of this money trickling down to me? Clearly I get the enjoyment of being Canadian and playing hockey. Reditors are no different. None of them were tricked, they participate on the s…

Agreeing to write content for free to participate in a community is one thing.

How many Reddit users knew they were agreeing in the future for Reddit to sell the content they wrote to make money for Reddit, not them?

> no redditor expects to see a dime when they participate on the site and the site makes money form it.

Plenty of Redditors would disagree with you, and I'm not sure why you're acting like this is obvious. If I hadn't already deleted all my content and left because of the last debacle, I would be doing so for this.

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

#52

Post by FireBeyond »

nroets wrote: post #37
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…

Perhaps it isn't legally a license deal, but rather unlimited scraping i.e. database access. The AI company just trains their models on that and aren't creating derivative work in the legal sense.

That's not going to fly in any court.

"We didn't license it to them for the express purpose of training your model on this data, we only gave them database access for the express purpose of training their model on this data."

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

#53

Post by FireBeyond »

aldarisbm wrote: post #11
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.

good luck on actually "deleting" your data

The best that can be done, where possible, is to edit each comment down to whitespace, save that, and then delete it. But yeah, probably still not technically good enough.

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

#54

Post by chollida1 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #51
chollida1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year, I pay to play hockey. I pay for new equipment, jerseys, referees and ice time. And the arena gets paid by selling food to people who come to my games, sell advertising on the boards, beer to fans. What do I get and why is none of this money trickling down to me? Clearly I get the enjoyment of being Canadian and playing hockey. Reditors are no different. None of them were tricked, they participate on the s…

Agreeing to write content for free to participate in a community is one thing. How many Reddit users knew they were agreeing in the future for Reddit to sell the content they wrote to make money for Reddit, not them? > no redditor expects to see a dime when they participate on the site and the site makes money form it. Plenty of Redditors would disagree with you, and I'm not sure why you're acting like this is obviou…

>> no redditor expects to see a dime when they participate on the site and the site makes money form it.

> Plenty of Redditors would disagree with you, and I'm not sure why you're acting like this is obvious. If I hadn't already deleted all my content and left because of the last debacle, I would be doing so for this.

Really?

Ok, let's say reddit only sold adds for revenue.

What percentage of redditors do you think would feel justified to a percentage of reddit's ad revenue? Because the only reason the ads have value is because of the redditors themselves?

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

#55

Post by collingreen »

tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #30
blindriver wrote: post #23

This is exactly my point for many years now. Reddit exists because of the free work of the various subreddit communities and their moderators. And in return they get nothing. But the company, the investors and employees will all become rich off of it. It’s weird how no one cares that Reddit isn’t trickling down anything to the people that make the site a success.

I don't see how that is weird at all. Were you paid by ycombinator for your message? People often do things they enjoy doing without receiving a payment for it.

I think this analogy is flawed - the hn equivalent of posting is the same as Reddit and then it changes and gets weird if hn starts selling your writing.

I'm not sure why folks are trying to say that going to Reddit and doing activity where the price of admission is ads is the same as doing activity where the price of admission is they own your writing and sell it. You may be fine with it but they seem clearly distinct to me -- enough to be worth talking about instead of dismissing.

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

#57

Post by FireBeyond »

chollida1 wrote: post #54
FireBeyond wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreeing to write content for free to participate in a community is one thing. How many Reddit users knew they were agreeing in the future for Reddit to sell the content they wrote to make money for Reddit, not them? > no redditor expects to see a dime when they participate on the site and the site makes money form it. Plenty of Redditors would disagree with you, and I'm not sure why you're acting like this is obviou…

>> no redditor expects to see a dime when they participate on the site and the site makes money form it. > Plenty of Redditors would disagree with you, and I'm not sure why you're acting like this is obvious. If I hadn't already deleted all my content and left because of the last debacle, I would be doing so for this. Really? Ok, let's say reddit only sold adds for revenue. What percentage of redditors do you think w…

The only similarity there is revenue.

Ads are for consumption by Reddit users, and is an expected, if not liked, mechanism. That you can pay to opt out of.

People wrote content that they expected to be content on Reddit. Not to be later able to pick up a book (after buying it) and read their own words, that Reddit sold and made additional money off of (because they're still doing the ads, of course).

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

#58

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

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…

> When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.

From the oldest version of their ToS[1]. This is unchanged in the newest versions even for the EEA[2]. It seems pretty clearly that whatever AI training is doing is covered by "use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display" in "media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world" (emphasis mine).

[1] https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-october-15...

[2] https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-february-1...

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

#59

Post by tuwtuwtuwtuw »

collingreen wrote: post #55
tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that is weird at all. Were you paid by ycombinator for your message? People often do things they enjoy doing without receiving a payment for it.

I think this analogy is flawed - the hn equivalent of posting is the same as Reddit and then it changes and gets weird if hn starts selling your writing. I'm not sure why folks are trying to say that going to Reddit and doing activity where the price of admission is ads is the same as doing activity where the price of admission is they own your writing and sell it. You may be fine with it but they seem clearly distin…

What is stopping Hackernews from selling the content people post here?

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

#60

Post by GRISELDA »

jtriangle wrote: post #43
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 p…

Hacker News users love to act like they are the most intelligent people on the internet but in reality they have no idea what they are talking about if it isn't about some obscure programming language.

There is no conspiracy to restore deleted comments lol. You can only retrieve 1000 items with Reddit's API so when you use Shreddit to delete your posts only 1000 are deleted. Everything else before that remains untouched. Use PullPush to really delete everything.

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