According to reports, Reddit has struck a deal with a major AI company to sell it user content for educational purposes.
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The contract is estimated to be worth about $60 million annually, and comes at a time when the company is seeking to maximize its value ahead of a public share offering.
The company reportedly disclosed the deal to prospective investors during its initial public offering (IPO).
AI companies like OpenAI have so far trained their large language models by collecting data from the web, without asking permission from either websites or users. This practice is increasingly being questioned, leading companies to seek agreements with various websites, paying an annual fee for the right to use their content to train new models.
For example, Apple was reported last year to be negotiating the right to train its own AI models using news from several media companies.
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However, training models on user-generated content is controversial. Reddit's terms and conditions may make it legal to sell users' content, but that doesn't mean the users themselves will be happy.
Reddit found itself in trouble when it decided to charge prohibitive fees for access to the API that powered third-party apps like Apollo. This led to widespread protests from creators and users, with the company threatening retaliation.
A particular concern was the impact on disabled mediators, who had relied on the features of third-party applications.
While many subreddits have gone “dark,” restricting access to existing members, a few others have found a clever alternative: implementing an NFSW tag, which prevents Reddit from selling ads on them. Some of the subreddits that have adopted this tactic include r/HomeKit and r/HomePod.
See also: Reddit: Hackers stole source code and internal data
Reddit users have expressed various reactions to this situation. First, many of them have expressed concern about the protection of their personal data and privacy. Second, some users have reported that they feel betrayed by the platform, as they believe that the content they create should remain within the Reddit community and not be sold. Third, some users have reported that they will review their use of Reddit or stop using it altogether if the sale of content continues. Finally, there is a group of users who are asking for more transparency from Reddit management about how and why user content is sold.
Source: 9to5mac
