rubythulhu

I’ve been posting this to subs that haven’t blacked out:

Reddit wants to begin selling API data access to large AI companies at a really high margin so those AI companies can train their data on the content we generate and contribute to reddit, and reddit can make a shit ton of money on that.

This data API is also how third party apps and mod tools access reddit. Rather than charging apps a lower tier and AI companies a large one, reddit has instead decided to charge everyone for that data access.

As a result, not only are third party reddit apps going away because they’d have to charge huge fees to their users, but so are a lot of the tools that reddit’s unpaid volunteer moderators use to moderate subs, which means moderation quality is going to drastically drop soon.

In addition, the official reddit app is terrible for accessibility, and does not work with things like screen readers that blind or partially-sighted people use. These issues have been reported to reddit since alienblue became the official reddit app, reddit does not care to put money into fixing them. third party apps do this. people who rely on these apps to be able to even use reddit are basically getting kicked off reddit for being disabled.

All so reddit can cash in on all the content the communities of reddit produce, without compensating the content creators nor paying the unpaid volunteer moderators whose lives they just made way more difficult.

Exactly. Reddit's hunt for profitability will destroy it, both in huge chunks like this 3PA exodus, and just slowly trickling away over time, as the platform gets worse and worse and moderation becomes worse and worse.

I'm not happy about it. There's a lot of places on reddit that are amazing for community support, especially in LGBTQ+ spaces. As a trans woman, I myself owe so much of who I am to queer-friendly subreddits and meme subreddits. Lemmy has some good LGBT support spaces, but not enough.

Reddit was a community-first place in the past. now its so far beyond that that it is barreling towards being just "an engine to get free user-generated content we can re-sell to large AI companies". they don't care about the actual communities as long as they're filled with content producers and consumers, regardless of quality.

LGBTQ+ support spaces. Lemmy has some, but not enough.

This whole thing is all about trying to monetize user-generated content by selling it at a high premium to large AI companies. If they allow a lower pricing tier for 3pa’s, other companies/individuals will find a way to use that lower tier for training models, and this is the only thing spez sees as a viable profit model for reddit.

Yup. AI consumers are more profitable than 3rd party apps. why focus on tiered pricing when you can just name a price point everyone has to pay that only huge AI companies are willing to.

Reddit gets their content for free. Reselling it at a high price to AI/ML consumers is an easy way to turn free content into profit with almost no effort.

I feel like the “real reason” behind this stems from the pricing for AI training. Reddit wants to capitalize on its user-generated content for AI training. the safest way to do this, and ensure that no AI company can do this, and those large AI companies can’t argue that they’re getting unfair pricing compared to app developers.

That’s reddit’s big plan: sell user-generated content to large AI companies. That’s how you make a platform like reddit profitable. You resell content you got for free to massive companies willing to pay high prices for that content.

become a 501(c)(3)

we need a version of both here

I'm experiencing this on multiple instances. Just tells me could not connect to [instance]. I would really love a native iOS app for lemmy.