As the AI era begins, Reddit is leaning into its humanity
www.fastcompany.com
In 2023, Reddit faced a moderator revolt. In 2024, it will explore the role of people-powered community in the AI age—and might complete a long-delayed IPO.

The moderator rebellion is crushed, there are no longer any third party apps competing with the official Reddit app and Reddit seems to be as popular as ever.“It’s a nice time right now,” he says. “I think we’re executing really well.” In 2024, the company plans to focus on three pillars. 1. Maximizing ad revenue 2. Charging AI companies for training on its data3 . Enabling users to make money from Reddit

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    11·
    1 year ago

    says the web megacommunity is on a roll.

    “Outside, pretty viola; inside, rotten wood.”

    I don’t interact with Reddit any more so it’s plain as day for me to see, when I do visit it, that the place changed considerably from the APIcalypse to now. It’s the decadence from the last ~5 years, except on steroids; brain drained, bots going rogue, users screeching at each other based on assumptions and mods doing nothing to handle it. Those trashy and large subreddits are fairly active, but it seems to me that activity for smaller subs went considerably down.

    As cofounder and CEO Steve Huffman explained to The New York Times’ Mike Isaac, the company was concerned by how AI giants such as OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft were mining the wealth of knowledge in its discussion threads to train chatbots, thereby creating new competition for Reddit while it footed the bill.

    And based on how he handled the third party apps, he’s likely omitting critical concerns.

    And also, you know…

    • [User] I made something!
    • [Reddit Inc.] You made something? [snatches it] It’s mine. My precioooous!

    “Reddit is an open platform, and we love that,” he told me. “

    Holy shit, Greedy Pigboy’s ability to lie with a straight face never ceases to amaze me. It’s almost like he’s telling the interviewer “you’re gullible trash, aren’t you? Yes, you’re stupid, so are the things reading your article. I’m going to smear some bullshit on your snouts and you’re going to swallow it, like the filthy animals lacking human-like reasoning that you are.”

    Sorry folks here for the tone. I can’t be bothered to read it further.

    Potentially hot take: perhaps it’s time to punish Reddit Inc. and Greedy Pigboy, isn’t it?

    • snownyte@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      They’re going to train those AIs to be as degenerative as the Reddit users themselves, lol. Glorious.

    • Uranium3006@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      The small subs matter a lot. Same principal as grocery stores, everyone carries the most popular products but the large variety of storm moving products keeps people coming to a specific store. Likewise any old website can have your basic selection of memes news politics Etc but the smaller communities are what make the place unique. We’re basically at the point where for a lot of people those Basics are already met so Reddit having problems with their smaller subreddits means I’ll be less to keep people around. Once those communities all make their way over here then there’ll be nothing but generic slop. An audience of normies scrolling past slop can just vanish in an instant

      • Shhalahr@beehaw.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, I recently made a reference to /r/CrabsEatingThings in another thread. Where the hell do I go for such oddly specific content now?

        • Uranium3006@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          Unfortunately I think that means it’s our responsibility to start those communities and seat them with the initial content