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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3330 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 18, 2024

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So reddit is selling data to AI training now according to Bloomberg. [Archive] . Well I for one isn't suprised! A huge bunch mediocre data nicely cleaned up by unpaid mods and community sentiment encoded in the karma. When I left reddit I removed all my posts and comments. I lost my trust way before the API debacle and seeing what is happening now, it just validates me. Anyone else?

Trust in what?

I don’t think AI training is any worse a purpose than advertising, which I assume is where they sent it beforehand.

Advertisers are not usually receiving data wholesale, it is a process of that the advertisement targets are determined by the data "owner" so they can take a portion of the ad sale. The whole cambridge analytical scandal was just that they mined Facebook data for personality profiles and bragg about behavior modification based on that data, despite it going against an actual contract with Facebook. Now in hindsight the media narrative was overblown and there where a bunch of claims that didn't turn out to be true. But that a company that wasn't supposed to keep the data and use it, kept the data and used it is true.

Trust in what?

That they are sensible people running the place. Look I was one of the 10 000 first users of Reddit. I was naive in thinking that it was run by people who wanted people on the internet build communities. My leaving predated everything with API blackout and this whole LLM mess. I saw admin crackdown on small communities that did nothing wrong and power mods bullying regular users accross multiple subreddits without the admins lifting a finger. The LLM sale is just aligned what I saw. They don't give a shit about the users of the site, I got wiser...

I have a hard time imagining why the early adapters of Reddit thought how it could ever be a good idea to consolidate the internet forum ecosystem into a single massive website. What was the perceived benefit here? These forums and communities already existed, Reddit didn’t even create them.

Convenience. You can use hundred of forums on one site without having to go through the tedious process of signing up, remembering login info, and clicking on verification emails for each separate forum. And you get a consolidated feed of all the forums, and notifications of replies to your posts.

It worked great in the earlier days before the moderators went absolutely mad.

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