The article makes the case, that reddit’s main problem is its leader’s disconnect from reality, i.e.:
Look, one of the reasons Reddit said it would start charging for access to its API was that its content is a valuable source of data for OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s already been one of the most valuable sources of information for Google Search for years. Obviously, if you see someone else capitalizing on your thing, it’s only natural that you are going to want a piece of it.
To be clear, it isn’t Reddit’s data that is so useful to Google or OpenAI. It’s Reddit’s users’ data. You know, the content they contribute for free. That’s an important distinction because the value of Reddit without those users is exactly zero.
enshittification at its finest.
The last paragraph is interesting and I think sums up what’s wrong with the whole zeitgeist of these tech and media companies: it can be good (and, I argue, is actually better) without being “worth billions”. This feeling that sustainability isn’t enough, decent profit isn’t enough, it has to be worth the GDP of a small country is awful, and it is always done at the expense of the users, who for the most part complacently don’t give a fuck. Unbound greed really is an ugly thing to see…
Edit: fixing autocorrect…
Wait until Reddit is hit with massive fines for failing to comply with all the GDPR deletion requests.
I filed mine for the complete history on two accounts. One 11 years old. The other 4. I edited comments I’d made, and I unsubscribed from every subreddit except ApolloApp
Yeah, every comment I’ve deleted got eventually undeleted. Multiple times. Now I’ve started editing old comments. I hope someone fucks him up with the gdpr lawsuit at least in EU.
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I think the biggest issue is that u/spez thinks Reddit content is proprietary when it’s really a public forum.
The EU law disagrees with what the CEO thinks, and that’s what matters.
Makes some good points that we have all been making for a while. The only problem is that not us too late for spez to change course. He has to continue doing this at least to save face (which I don’t know is possible).
I am thankful for Reddit’s series of mistakes, since the latest one has definitely helped Fediverse reach critical mass. And that is all that matters, not the fate of some semidead platform.
He doesn’t have the ability to see that. Hilarious how blind he is to everything when even the money behind the ipo is like “ehhhh maybe you’re just not as good as you think.” My shaude is really freuding today.
Spez is definitely struggling to square his, and his existing shareholder’s, wants with reality.
As to OpenAI and the other LLM snakeoil merchants, it’s definitely true that reddit, and most importantly the actual creators of the content - us - are compensated for the value we create. This is a key point argued in Jaron Lanier’s “Who Owns the Future”, a book realised 10 years ago which only gets more relevant with each passing year.
Spez thinking our content is somehow his, just because he pays to host it, would be hilarious if it wasn’t so delusional.
Wow, an actually good summary of what the problem is with Reddit
