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 :-)

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    10 months ago

    It still amazes me that there are people on Reddit who are upset about this but still keep using Reddit lol!

    Even if they’re “addicts” it’s not like there’s no where else to go! That’s like an alcoholic finding out that their favorite brand of whiskey is laced with lead and arsenic but still continuing to drink it instead of just changing brands!

    I guess there are still some people there who naively think that it’s all somehow going to go back to what it used to be, but at this point it mostly seems like pure laziness

    • Blaze@reddthat.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      pure laziness

      Inertia, low priority.

      Changing habits can be hard, the statu quo is usually easier

    • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      It still amazes me that there are people on Reddit who are upset about this but still keep using Reddit lol!

      I’m not sure why you’d be amazed, I mean people are still using Twitter and that’s a thousand times worse than Reddit.

    • KingBoo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      Even if they’re “addicts” it’s not like there’s no where else to go!

      For people that want a true reddit replacement, there ISN’T somewhere else to go.

      It certainly isn’t lemmy (imo) Twitter is a cesspool…

      • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        10 months ago

        You are correct that Lemmy is not a “true Reddit replacement”. In my opinion it’s better than Reddit! The only downside I’ve really noticed is that there aren’t as many varied communities built up yet

        • KingBoo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          10 months ago

          Ahh. What about the site has been better for you?

          I’ve bad the opposite experience, unfortunately.

          I’ve struggled to easily navigate and find communities I want to participate in, on lemmy.

          Everytime I’ve asked for help I’ve been told it’s a me problem, because lemmy isn’t reddit.

          • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            10 months ago

            Yeah I totally agree, I like it here but I couldn’t recommend it to a friend really because it’s super awkward with not knowing where to sign up because it’s so hard to tell who is blocking who - sign up to thy wrong server and basically no one can see your posts and you can’t see helf the stuff. Then finding communities is difficult enough to start with let alone finding an active community among the dozens of similar named ones - and that before you even get into the various problems with elitists and gate keepers and wokescolds…

            It’s annoying that it feels most the users would rather this place dies than do anything to make it usable for normal people. We need to work as a community and make it more welcoming, to create tools to help people find what they need and to make it worth while to be here

            • KingBoo@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              THANK YOU!

              This is my exact situation and no one has really shared my experience yet but you.

              You’ve listed many of the problems I have.

              Which app do you use?

        • Makeshift@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          10 months ago

          This is a downside. I mainly was on a couple specific video game subs and some small branch subs of broader communities.

          I have fallen back about once a month.

        • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Yeah, so do I, but let’s not kid ourselves. Lemmy has a long ways to go. It can scratch the itch the same way Reddit did, but there’s a whole ton of stuff missing here that’s only on Reddit.

        • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          But they won’t bring them here until it’s a good space to be.

          I run a community on here and reddit, I hate to say it but reddit is far more welcoming even once you get past the difficulty of servers and stuff here. Lemmy has problems with down voting and lack of participation, and it’s not like I’m talking about right wing politics subs or anything it’s for an open source project.

          We need to make discovering communities easier and we need to be more open to new people coming - that means supporting things even if they aren’t to our taste and trying not to gatekeep.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        10 months ago

        Reddit rose from the ashes of digg. Maybe lemmy will take its place, maybe another will. The biggest issue is that it’s already a trove of knowledge, and users are shredding their account history as they leave to keep reddit from profiting from it. I understand why they do it, but it’s kind of like burning the library of Alexandria.

        • Makeshift@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          I took the only multi-viewed comment I remember making and moved it here.

          Had one comment people kept digging up YEARS after I made it, copypasta’d it to Lemmy and edited original comments to redirect here.

          If more people would migrate info they’ve shared like that it would be nice.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      I mean fuck, i’m an addict and I’ve managed to stay away. They’ve got other issues. Like a person that won’t leave an abusive spouse.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      People sometimes prefer the devils they know to the angels they don’t know. It’s hard to break out of even abusive relationships.