this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Reddit: 'We Are in the Early Stages of Monetizing Our User Base' (www.404media.co)
submitted 9 months ago by DolphinMath@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
104 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.”

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Reddit has entered a contract with Google, which will license its content for $60 million a year in order to train Google’s AI models.

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[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago (10 children)

Question: Wouldn't Lemmy instances easy be able to this without many users knowing?

And would they also be able to sell data from other instances, because they can load data from federated instances?

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Technically? Probably, yes. Legally? I don't think so (never looked into it)

[–] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why do you believe they wouldn't legally be able to?

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 9 months ago

It's the whole copyright question. Users own the copyright on their own posts, and it's the terms of service that are supposed to say what the server and other federated servers are allowed or not allowed to do with them. I don't even remember if there were terms of service when I joined Lemmy... But assuming there were, and they didn't explicitly say whether it or federated servers can use user content to train AI, then it becomes a legal question that can only be determined by courts.

Note that this determination will only apply in the country/state where that court is.

IANAL

[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And why would anyone believe they'd stop if it wasn't legal.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago

Nobody does

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