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apparently, the path to profitability was "shamelessly sell out on AI hype bullshit"
Well and behind it is stealing other peoples' work (posts and comments, moderation and administration) and selling them as yours. The oldest capitalist criminal trick in the book: privatization AKA primitive accumulation AKA enclosure of the commons.
I mean, to be fair, I'm nearly positive that the Reddit T&Cs will have said they retain rights to anything posted there for ages. And the AI bubble is already showing signs of deflation or bursting coming not too far down the line. Let them enjoy their first and hopefully only profitable year.
No one is arguing that they don't have the legal right.
But they believe they have the moral right, and they do not.
TBH, it feels like social media always needed some back door business like this to make it profitable.
It's almost like human communication is not supposed to be a product or something...
Which is a good reminder to everyone to support your local Lemmy instances.
A couple months ago, I logged into an old Reddit account. It only took a few minutes of scrolling before it happened.
I had to scroll back up and try again, and record my screen so I could doublecheck my count later.
35 ads or “recommended” posts (i.e. not from anything I subscribed to) in a row.
I’m curious what that means for the overall percentage of the average user’s feed.
Edit: Okay yall... I appreciate all of the free technical support, but it's really not needed. I was just documenting some findings.
But since everyone is so concerned about improving my Reddit experience, here are a few things to consider:
I know this might sound a little condescending, but why are you torturing yourself by not using an adblocker?
I was using the mobile app.
That app is a special kind of inhuman torture.
Android Firefox has access to adblockers though??
Yikes.
Fuck Spez
(Hey noone else said it in this thread so I think I have to)
This is important for everyone to hear regularly. Thank you
98 million are bots
Indeed, you will note that they carefully chose the moniker "Daily Active Uniques" and not "Daily Active Users".
I think that speaks volumes, as humans are definitely harder to retain.
The bot generated comments are training AI... full circle
It won't be long before the internet is just bots talking to each other and advertisers paying them to do so.
After selling user generated content to Ai.
That's all well and good, but it comes at the expense of the user experience.
NPCs don't mind
Just as we are all leaving for Lemmy. Reddit now makes you have an account to access some of their shit. Good riddance!
ok now i am 100% sure im hoping for an ai bubble
As I often mention in other communities, this smells like value ~~exploitation~~ extraction* from a distance. Value ~~exploitation~~ extraction typically generates a peak of profit in the short term, but it makes losses even harsher in the long run.
As such I don't think that Reddit is getting "bigger". That profit is like someone who lives in a wooden house, dismantling their own home to sell it as lumber; of course they'll get some quick cash, but it's still a bad idea.
In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman attributed the recent increase in users to the platform’s AI-powered translation feature.
Let's pretend for a moment that we can totally trust Huffman's claim here. Even human translations often get some issues, as nuances and whatnots are not translated, and this generates petty fights, specially in a younger userbase like Reddit's; with AI tendency to hallucinate, that gets way worse. And even if that was not an issue, a lot of content is simply irrelevant for people outside a certain regional demographic.
*EDIT REASON: I switched the terms, sorry. (C'mon, I'm L3.)
this comment in one of the cross-postings seems relevant: https://lemmy.world/comment/13157556
Yup, it is 100% relevant! Selling user data is extremely profitable, specially with a large userbase. However, it lowers the value of the platform - it makes users less eager to genuinely contribute with it (due to privacy concerns, seeing it as a "they're exploiting me!" matter, etc.). As such the data being generated there becomes less useful, less relevant, and less profitable over time, paradoxically enough.
Have to wonder how many of these "users" are actually people too. I'd bet most of them aren't.
I think that most users there are still human beings, but botting has become a big enough problem that the platform can't be seen as a place for genuine content any more.
I’m thinking AI-powered something is going on, for sure.
Really wonder how they plan to increase their revenue on the AI training data, especially now that a significant amount of their data is "poisoned" by the models they try to train
Well I'm glad my leaving the platform had such an impact, I never said
Deceased users’ estates still haven’t agreed to the new terms, have they?
Boo!
Whatever, this is far from the end of the story, and Lemmy has nothing but time. The bigger they are, the harder they fall in the end.
I vividly remember the Digg migration and Reddit is so very much like Digg these days.
I'm looking forward to LLMs copying the gibberish german communities like to use. It is very common there to translate things word for word without any regard for correct german grammar or understandibility.
Who would have thought, that it would one day be a weapon against ai.
Dammit, all of you told me Reddit was going into the ground and I didn't invest lol
Pffffffffffff...since when is it a good idea to get financial advice from randos on the internet?
Congrats to them. Sad though that they had to go as low as selling their users out to AI training for that. And context sensitive advertisements in social media are also more a drag to society. But hey, they did it.
Maybe now they can shift to more ethical business models?
They wouldn't, even if they knew how. Because unethical makes more money.
Maybe now they can shift to more ethical business models?
You can't honestly expect that?
Such a shame it turned out the way it did, but the writing was on the wall. Every single reddit announcement thread was a shit show aha. I guess in a way they were transparent about only being in it for the money. Their actions were always consistent
The loser remains a loser, but he's not losing money.