Reddit is getting bigger.

Reddit’s advertising revenue grew to $315.1 million, while “other” revenue reached $33.2 million on account of “data licensing agreements signed earlier this year.” Both Google and OpenAI have cut deals with Reddit to train their AI models on its posts.

In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman attributed the recent increase in users to the platform’s AI-powered translation feature. Reddit started letting users translate posts into French last year before expanding to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German. Now, Huffman says Reddit plans to expand translation to over 30 countries through 2025.

    • Jure Repinc@lemmy.mlEnglish
      43·
      6 小时前

      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.

      • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
        5·
        7 小时前

        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.

        • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
          9·
          6 小时前

          No one is arguing that they don’t have the legal right.

          But they believe they have the moral right, and they do not.

          • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
            1·
            6 小时前

            I never was arguing against that. Also I’m pretty sure their moral compass was pushed by the feds until he topped himself, so nothing about their bullshit has surprised me since.

      • Sabata@ani.social
        15·
        7 小时前

        It’s almost like human communication is not supposed to be a product or something…

    • qupada@fedia.io
      22·
      6 小时前

      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.

  • kibiz0rEnglish
    46·
    8 小时前

    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.

  • Hnery@feddit.org
    10·
    6 小时前

    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

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    11·
    42 分钟前

    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.)

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        3·
        36 分钟前

        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.

    • S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      2 小时前

      value exploitation

      I tried searching that term but had no luck any article I could use to know more?

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        2·
        45 分钟前

        I fucked it up and switched the terms, sorry. Look for “value extraction” instead; you’ll find multiple references to the concept such as this or Mazzucato’s “The Value of Everything”.

        To keep it short: you create value when you produce desirable goods/services for the customers; however, when you extract it, you’re picking the value that was already created (by society, your customers, or even your own business) and turning it into profit. The later is faster but unsustainable, as that value doesn’t pop up from nowhere, so when a business shifts from value creation to value extraction it’ll get some quick cash and then go kaboom.

        In Reddit’s case, this value is mostly users willing to generate, curate, and share content with the platform, and other users knowing this:

        • someone recommends you a product/brand. The person might be wrong, but you were reasonably sure that they aren’t a corporation astroturfing their own product. Someone else might criticise it instead.
        • you hop into your favourite subreddit and, while the content there isn’t the best, it’s still good enough - because the mods gave some fucks about growing their subreddits;
        • you discuss some controversial topic. You might get dogpiled, but at least you know that the dogs piling you are human beings, that sometimes might listen to reason; a bot will never;
        • et cetera.

        All that value was being slowly extracted through the last years, but the changes in 2023/2024 did it the hardest.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        2·
        34 分钟前

        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.

  • Kratzkopf@discuss.tchncs.de
    7·
    7 小时前

    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.

  • Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org
    4·
    6 小时前

    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

  • Sibbo@sopuli.xyz
    5·
    7 小时前

    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?