Is reddit going to pay users? Or are they just going to collect the content generate by its users and then turn around and charge people to access it?
I think we all know that it's more column B than column A.
And while I'm not entirely comfortable with LLMs consuming all of that content without reimbursing the creators of that content. I don't see how Reddit charging for its API is different on any meaningful level.
Then maybe users should poison the content they post to make their data worthless unless Reddit decides to compensate its users who provide valuable info instead of updoots.
Reddit already exploits unpaid moderators to create and manage its communities, so I don't imagine that Reddit is in a hurry to compensate users for selling their data to Big AI.
I can consume HN content, turn around and use it to derive value. That value spills onto others in various forms or maybe I keep all the value for myself (can't think of how I would horde value without sharing because I would need to offer something to others to receive value myself).
Nonetheless, markets don't operate efficiently when people horde shit.
How do they plan to keep Google from using its search index of Reddit for training? Or keep OpenAI from using Common Crawl? Do they simply add "No AI" to their TOS?
Except when top voted comments are hivemind approved 'funny' quips/responses, or in reply to exercises in creative writing like half the posts in relationshipadvice, iwantthemanager, nuclear/pettyrevenge, etc
As noted in the comments, the API changes will also affect the quick .json representations of Reddit pages, which were an easy way to play with real-world data for beginners learning coding/data science.
Exactly. Users who contribute to the community of a for-profit enterprise that monetizes their contribution should also get paid.
I remember the good ol' days before reddit, where every community had its own forum, ran for the community, not for profit. Sure, they were running some ads to keep the lights on, but those were non targeted ads, just generic stuff based on the community.
With Dpreview dying along with so many other forums that used to serve various communities on the decline, Reddit becoming the one-stop-shop for all communities is the worst possible outcome.
I meant costs for their users. Reddit are covering their costs through ads and VC money. The users are creating the content on their platform that attracts more users. The users are the value to reddit.
Please no. I wish the users who create quality posts could get paid. But sadly, once money is involved, people will start to gamify the system, posting as much barely-passable garbage as possible to maximize upvotes, and the quality of content will deteriorate very quickly.
It is extremely interesting that money fails so hard at the one thing it should be good at, incentivizing behavior. I mean, yes, you'd get more content, but it would be hollow, as you say.
It can be a good motivator and till be failing to serve any greater social purpose. People and organizations can get addicted to money exactly the same as people get addicted to sugar, nicotine, or cocaine. Addicts can be enormously tenacious, creative, and resourceful, but only to the end of feeding their addiction.
It could. Some people pursue it very aggressively, optimizing submission times and autoposting submissions of new papers or blog posts, for example. I recall one semi-spam account that was set up to submit anything relating to Ruby, including videos that happened to mention gemstones in the title.
Totally agree. I was just taking issue with the blame on money specifically. Money is working as intended. The rules in which money is operating are fundamentally broken though, no doubt.
> It is extremely interesting that money fails so hard at the one thing it should be good at, incentivizing behavior.
Money itself doesn't fail to incentivize behavior. Rather, it is what you choose to reward with money that has be carefully chosen to incentivize the behaviors you want to encourage (via monetary reward).
Basically the same as the alignment problem in AI. You need to be very careful of how you define your rewards, because you'll end up incentivizing exactly what you define.
This is also prevalent with the way that Google incentivizes page content structure now. I have to get 3/4 the way through a page before I find what I'm looking for because they encourage this big kitchen sink posts.
It is like Goodhart‘s Law (When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure) with an incentive attached to the measure. It probably needs to be in constant flux by design. Maybe a good thing as it would otherwise get rigid and boring.
It'd turn into a world where people would try to make money (which still happens but normally is sniffed out), instead of a place where people like LundgrensFrontKick produce content, for free, because they love doing so, like:
* Estimating how long it took The Joker to set up the giant cash pyramid in The Dark Knight
* Comparing the box office success of movies that have a snowmobile action scene vs those that have a jet ski action scene
* Objectively trying to determine which Fast and Furious movie was the fastest and most furious
As an avid redditor I can say it's already like that and they will teach it nothing of value unless they limit it to a very low number of subreddits, which will still barely teach it anything of value unless the goal is teaching it current generation humor and shitposting habits, which would be very valuable to anyone wanting to boost engagement and try to sway a fairly left leaning generation of people toward whatever they're selling.
Which is today's right-wing billionaires and their pet politicians.
Money's already involved. Rather than posting barely-passable garbage, the automated systems just repost things that were popular a year or two to various subjects, with the top few comments replacing the titles of the posts. There are a number of counter-bots that detect these posts and warn people that the content is being automatically reposted, but it doesn't really stop it form happening. Presumably Reddit chooses not to stop it because, hey, engagement, woo, metrics go up, manager of engagement look good.
I'm not sure exactly how they're monetizing (maybe they sell the accounts once they have some popular posts?), but they definitely are.
I think this is actually a reddit, and all other similar platforms, problem. The issue is that there's good content, funny memes, insightful essays, whatever, that was submitted in the past. Some of it is no longer relevant and some of it your audience has already seen and would be bored by - but lots of it would be valuable to resurface now.
Because reddit focuses mainly on what's happening recently the good content of the past that might be relevant to a user today is buried. Reposters play a valuable role in resurfacing content. I think a better paradigm, though one I can't really imagine that well, would remove the need for reposters by automatically showing the content they would repost. Maybe a recommendation algorithm?
No, the issue is that pretend internet points always end up having real value, because human brains are lazy and rate in-group signalling really high and therefore trust ads that come from "big people" more. That's like the whole thing behind the influencer advertising economy.
Reddit didn't get rid of r/hailcorporate on accident. There are literal industries that exist to make fake accounts, karma farm, and sell use of those accounts to post basically sponsored messages that maybe even reddit itself doesn't know are sponsored. Think of how many people say "I search reddit for product recommendations" and know that companies have been pushing on that button for years and years. Whether reddit is honestly trying to prevent this kind of stuff doesn't actually matter, because as long as real moderation costs money and breaking that moderation makes money, the advantage is towards those who break it. FFS, reddit still has most popular subreddits modded by one account and their sockpuppets.
It no longer shows up on the /all tab for most users. I imagine that is due to some rule fiddling they did, similar to how one of the donald trump subreddits kept gaming the system to be most of the me page so they changed the rules.
Hate to say it but this happens already from what I've seen on Reddit. Even decent subreddits I've followed for years that don't have the issues the major subs have. People want their karma, post low quality content, and somehow people still upvote them.
There would be far less objections to generative AI if these tools were being harnessed by (for example) social democracies to make societies overall more efficient and productive and to redistribute gains into greater overall security. What HN users tend to summarily dismiss as Luddism is the “golden rule” form of American Capitalism, where having the most money/compute resources entitles you to scrape and enclose the sum total of human creative and intellectual output for corporate gain. It’s the basic conflict of Capitalism - what gains should be returned to labor vs Capital owners, sublimated through a whole mess of pedantry, philosophizing, and cynical legal maneuvering to obfuscate that fact.
> When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
The Reddit user agreement is written based on US law and would be laughed out of any court in half the world. I literally _cannot_ waive my moral rights, and any company doing that is breaking the law in my country.
Users may not get paid, but they do get free access to one of the best moderated community web sites on the planet. I get hours of enjoyment and engagement from Reddit. Totally worth it for me. Of course YMMV...
I don't understand this attitude. If you don't like how someone mods their subreddit then why do you want to be part of it in the first place? You can make your own and run it how you please.
You really can't make your own if you're going up against an established subreddit.
This applies doubly so if it's an established region based subreddit i.e. city, state, province, or country, and IMO these are the most problematic subreddits for overmoderation. Finding non-partisan regional subreddits is damn near impossible.
But then people complain about getting banned from the said subreddit for not following the rules that make it what it is. It seems like you want to engage an already established community and just ignore the people that are currently there and play by the existing rules.
> people complain about getting banned from the said subreddit for not following the rules
That's not at all what I'm saying. There are a few subreddits with fair mods who enforce the rules fairly, but the great majority doesn't - they are the rules, and if they don't like you, tough tiddies. Making it effectively a "mod and minions", not a real community with real rules.
I want to be a part of it for the community. Moderators are the (un)necessary evil.
The fact that you seem to see moderators as "owners" of a subreddit doesn't really help the case.
The programmers who wrote Reddit, and the community. A subreddit is nothing without a community, so the fact that a moderator namesquatted a URL doesn't mean he "owns" anything, only that he has the power - the power to moderate it. Which, in my opinion, goes with the responsibility of upholding publicly stated rules and enforcing them in a fair manner.
Unfortunately, many of them start thinking, like you, that the power to moderate means they are the supreme authority and that the subreddit is about them - so they behave accordingly, feeding their ego at the expense of a community.
Of course, if you believe the power itself gives them ownership over a community, that's fine. It's just that I don't.
FWIW, we at Medium feel pretty similarly to Reddit but with a yes to this question about whether authors should get paid.
AI companies are betraying basic business principles: they are taking value from datasets like Reddit and Medium without giving any value back. Fine if you can get away with it. But since AI, especially text based LLMs, relies on source material, it's pretty straightforward for the platforms that host that source material to deny access. Things like ChatGPT do need current source material.
I don't think it'll come to a war though and that the AI companies will instead give some value back. It could be as simple as citations that send traffic back. That's essentially the exchange of value that we all have with Google these days.
But if it's money, then I think the obligation is for platforms to pass that on the authors. It'd be hard for an individual author to negotiate this on their own with a company like OpenAI, but platforms are in a good position to negotiate on their behalf.
Another in a really long list of issues that need a clear differentiation between human consumption and machines. So many things that were innocuous or even useful before the age of ubiquitous cameras, other sensors, and computers, are now a big problem.
You're in no position to negotiate this with OpenAI because they already have the relevant data stored locally. So does Google/Bing. You could be in a position to negotiate it with smaller upcoming OpenAI competitors, but all that will achieve is granting OpenAI and Google/Bing a monopoly because their competitors will have new large costs that they don't.
Also, Medium has a metered paywall already. Why not just let them open up a corporate account and pay to access paywalled content the same way users do? Why are any negotiations required?
BTW I use Medium but I never use the paywall. I'm fine with my content being used to train AI for free. The payments and tax complexity involved aren't worth the tiny amount of income that any such deal might generate, nor do I want OpenAI to have a monopoly.
Maybe no position with Google because they can bundle it with search results and threaten to take away search traffic. But OpenAI definitely does not already have all the relevant data. They need the new stuff also. That's part of the Reddit position as well.
There is already a compensation system setup for ugc. Users are already free to evaluate what they share on Reddit for what they get in return. But users have effectively been compensated for providing their content.
Moderators should, in my opinion. They’re doing a ton of the thankless janitorial work of cleaning up Reddit’s walled garden. If Reddit mods quit for a week Reddit wouldn’t have a product.
I would say no to this. Reddit is giving you a platform and in exchange they get the content. If you don't think that is fair deal you're free to just not make the content.
As a Reddit addict who's spent thousands of hours on the website, I feel I am very well compensated for my content. For every post and comment I give to Reddit, Reddit serves me millions of posts and comments in return. This has massive entertainment and educational value to me, so I consider it a very favourable trade.
That said, on subreddits I see people who post content without attribution all the time. I recall in /r/aww you can't directly link to an Instagram post but you can "steal" the image and post it, and it's optional as to whether or not you link to the Instagram post within the comments. Likewise, people take videos from YouTube/TikTok and re-host it on Reddit.
In smaller subreddits people will post entire pay-walled articles as if writers only get paid in likes.
You'll have an account like "Science is amazing" or something similar which seems uplifting and does show relevant/great content. Given the positive name and quality content, they get popular quickly.
But they never attribute or give back. They gain millions of followers whilst the original creators of the content get left behind. One of many things broken on the internet.
So this is how SkyNet or the Matrix starts, I guess. Any AI trained using the content from Reddit would obviously conclude that humankind deserves to be eradicated.
/s
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
God I hope this happens someday to us. Except we are humans so we have already planned for this, and we can take out whatever adversarial alien civilization exists, however advanced they may be on paper. Even if it takes millennia we should be the dominant species in the galaxy and beyond.
ChatGPT is on a trajectory to overtake Reddit in popularity.
And every interaction from users with ChatGPT is valuable content provided to OpenAI.
Most people don't realize this, but every question contains information. When a user asks "Which city is better for digital nomads, Berlin or Lisbon?", they have given out a bunch of information. That there is something called "digital nomads". That there are cities called "Berlin" and "Lisbon". That those seem to be considered good for "digital nomads".
And even more so when the chat continues. If ChatGPT praises how nice a city is for studying and the users replies "I don't study. I need a cheap apartment with fast internet", the user provided information about the preferences of "digital nomads", that apartments can be cheap or expensive, that apartments have internet, that internet can be faster or slower.
This is not how LLMs work at all. Once your chat session ends that's it. Updating the weights is expensive (although it's done semi regularly). And in updating weights the training datasets' quality becomes an issue.
Folks are drastically underestimating the "grey goo" problem when it comes to training data. Now that AI generated content is so cheap to generate, the quality of training datasets is going to plummet.
Soon Reddit's users will want a cut of it for content they create.
Then all the places these users are copying content from will want their share.
There's no solution here. Either the web stays (mostly) open and free-for-all like it is now or everyone sets up their own little walls and ends the party.
Reddit should consider paying its moderators. Or employ moderators who don't use their vast unchecked powers to astroturf the site on behalf of shadowy companies.
Society would not be better off if reddit mods had more economic power.
The latter point isn't a bug it's a feature. Reddit is designed to function that way. The owners/execs have never expressed any interest in countering it outside of the limpest lip service imaginable.
I moderated two large subreddits (on various accounts). They responded to this by permanently banning both the accounts and the subreddits. They don't want users.
What a twist of fate! The social media generation companies built their success on aggregating other people’s content and offering new ways to interact with it. “No we’re just linking to what other sites provide for free”. Now, there’s a new leather jacket in town. “We’re just training on data that you already provide for free”.
Of course it’s fun to watch a turf war, and we can all cheer for our favorite team and quibble about who deserves a punch in the gut.
But, we also need to keep an eye on the horizon. This will change the world, even and especially the spaces that we currently rely on. Just look at what happened to legacy media when the aggregators came: it largely turned into blogspam and clickbait. Comment sections (like this one) aren’t perfect, but they’re a damn good pressure valve for regular people to interact with the world. What will happen to those, for instance?
Theres plenty of incentive for people to shoot the breeze and shout into the void on comment sections. Typing to an LLM just isnt the same, especially with the amnesiac ones we have now.
That being said, I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible, with the better part of it being old or in niche subs on niche topics (like fandoms or memes) that the LLM trainers are avoiding anyway.
> Theres plenty of incentive for people to […] shout into the void on comment sections. Typing to an LLM just isnt the same[…]
I am concerned with the opposite, that LLMs will shout into our comment sections. For instance, building a convincing sentiment manipulating bit network will be dirt cheap and easy. Even here on HN there’s a financial incentive to flood the place with bots to promote tech products.
> I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible
That’s fine, but the important thing is that most comments are written by real people who wasted time to write it.
Not just that, but language is used as a marker. You can tell when someone talks about a subject they know a lot about. This ability to judge for yourself, based on the content alone, will be eroded. Anything can sound convincing, even to the trained ear. This makes content-oriented communities like Reddit and HN particularly vulnerable.
Oh yeah that is a definite issue. Maybe mods/LLM bots in some niche subs can save them with very strict on topic requirements, which would reduce the incentive for most of spam, but the more general parts of reddit (and HN) are in trouble.
That’s such generic logic it applies to society as a whole anymore. We just extend past effort.
James Madison wrote about it, saying the future owes deference to the past by carrying on the benefits it inherits from it.
I wonder if people could just social in place more; talk, make art, rather than stare at a glass obelisk all day should social media die. You think that’s ever happened in human history? I dunno.
347 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 291 ms ] threadI think we all know that it's more column B than column A.
And while I'm not entirely comfortable with LLMs consuming all of that content without reimbursing the creators of that content. I don't see how Reddit charging for its API is different on any meaningful level.
They don't need to as they claim a royalty-free license [0] over all content posted to reddit (Section 5).
[0] https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement
Nonetheless, markets don't operate efficiently when people horde shit.
As noted in the comments, the API changes will also affect the quick .json representations of Reddit pages, which were an easy way to play with real-world data for beginners learning coding/data science.
Had no idea this existed... replacing the slash at the end of the URL and appending .json will output the post in JSON. Quite nice!
If this also extends to independent third-party clients then that's basically going to be the end of Reddit.
Totally agree, no question about that. But data comes from users. Shouldn't they also get paid?
I remember the good ol' days before reddit, where every community had its own forum, ran for the community, not for profit. Sure, they were running some ads to keep the lights on, but those were non targeted ads, just generic stuff based on the community.
With Dpreview dying along with so many other forums that used to serve various communities on the decline, Reddit becoming the one-stop-shop for all communities is the worst possible outcome.
It's not money that's failing, it's the rule-masters. Agents can't work well in systems with bad rules.
Money itself doesn't fail to incentivize behavior. Rather, it is what you choose to reward with money that has be carefully chosen to incentivize the behaviors you want to encourage (via monetary reward).
This is a company taking user contributions as their own, aggregating it, and using their work for free to make money off it.
As if this behavior isn't already rampant.
It'd turn into a world where people would try to make money (which still happens but normally is sniffed out), instead of a place where people like LundgrensFrontKick produce content, for free, because they love doing so, like:
* Estimating how long it took The Joker to set up the giant cash pyramid in The Dark Knight
* Comparing the box office success of movies that have a snowmobile action scene vs those that have a jet ski action scene
* Objectively trying to determine which Fast and Furious movie was the fastest and most furious
https://www.reddit.com/user/LundgrensFrontKick/?sort=top
Yes I know he has like a podcast now or something, but that only came after years of doing this for no reason other than he enjoyed doing it.
Which is today's right-wing billionaires and their pet politicians.
I'm not sure exactly how they're monetizing (maybe they sell the accounts once they have some popular posts?), but they definitely are.
Because reddit focuses mainly on what's happening recently the good content of the past that might be relevant to a user today is buried. Reposters play a valuable role in resurfacing content. I think a better paradigm, though one I can't really imagine that well, would remove the need for reposters by automatically showing the content they would repost. Maybe a recommendation algorithm?
Reddit didn't get rid of r/hailcorporate on accident. There are literal industries that exist to make fake accounts, karma farm, and sell use of those accounts to post basically sponsored messages that maybe even reddit itself doesn't know are sponsored. Think of how many people say "I search reddit for product recommendations" and know that companies have been pushing on that button for years and years. Whether reddit is honestly trying to prevent this kind of stuff doesn't actually matter, because as long as real moderation costs money and breaking that moderation makes money, the advantage is towards those who break it. FFS, reddit still has most popular subreddits modded by one account and their sockpuppets.
https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/
https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement
> When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
Powertripping basement dwellers who ban anyone who refuses to worship their supreme authority are one of the worse aspects of Reddit.
This applies doubly so if it's an established region based subreddit i.e. city, state, province, or country, and IMO these are the most problematic subreddits for overmoderation. Finding non-partisan regional subreddits is damn near impossible.
That's not at all what I'm saying. There are a few subreddits with fair mods who enforce the rules fairly, but the great majority doesn't - they are the rules, and if they don't like you, tough tiddies. Making it effectively a "mod and minions", not a real community with real rules.
Unfortunately, many of them start thinking, like you, that the power to moderate means they are the supreme authority and that the subreddit is about them - so they behave accordingly, feeding their ego at the expense of a community. Of course, if you believe the power itself gives them ownership over a community, that's fine. It's just that I don't.
Access to the rest of the current community.
AI companies are betraying basic business principles: they are taking value from datasets like Reddit and Medium without giving any value back. Fine if you can get away with it. But since AI, especially text based LLMs, relies on source material, it's pretty straightforward for the platforms that host that source material to deny access. Things like ChatGPT do need current source material.
I don't think it'll come to a war though and that the AI companies will instead give some value back. It could be as simple as citations that send traffic back. That's essentially the exchange of value that we all have with Google these days.
But if it's money, then I think the obligation is for platforms to pass that on the authors. It'd be hard for an individual author to negotiate this on their own with a company like OpenAI, but platforms are in a good position to negotiate on their behalf.
The AI is definitely giving value back.
I’m curious how a content platforms TOS will matchup against a Search Engine’s webcrawler TOS.
“I want people to find and access my content, but I own it.”
vs
“I will send people to your content, but any public data I can access, I can store and process how I want.”
Also, Medium has a metered paywall already. Why not just let them open up a corporate account and pay to access paywalled content the same way users do? Why are any negotiations required?
BTW I use Medium but I never use the paywall. I'm fine with my content being used to train AI for free. The payments and tax complexity involved aren't worth the tiny amount of income that any such deal might generate, nor do I want OpenAI to have a monopoly.
because reddit don't actually delete anything (plainly visible in GDPR dump)
a single letter from a solicitor to his hosting would probably shut that down
That said, on subreddits I see people who post content without attribution all the time. I recall in /r/aww you can't directly link to an Instagram post but you can "steal" the image and post it, and it's optional as to whether or not you link to the Instagram post within the comments. Likewise, people take videos from YouTube/TikTok and re-host it on Reddit.
In smaller subreddits people will post entire pay-walled articles as if writers only get paid in likes.
You'll have an account like "Science is amazing" or something similar which seems uplifting and does show relevant/great content. Given the positive name and quality content, they get popular quickly.
But they never attribute or give back. They gain millions of followers whilst the original creators of the content get left behind. One of many things broken on the internet.
I’m pro human species so I just want us to win.
And every interaction from users with ChatGPT is valuable content provided to OpenAI.
Most people don't realize this, but every question contains information. When a user asks "Which city is better for digital nomads, Berlin or Lisbon?", they have given out a bunch of information. That there is something called "digital nomads". That there are cities called "Berlin" and "Lisbon". That those seem to be considered good for "digital nomads".
And even more so when the chat continues. If ChatGPT praises how nice a city is for studying and the users replies "I don't study. I need a cheap apartment with fast internet", the user provided information about the preferences of "digital nomads", that apartments can be cheap or expensive, that apartments have internet, that internet can be faster or slower.
No, Agents that can query current information do not fix these issues.
Folks are drastically underestimating the "grey goo" problem when it comes to training data. Now that AI generated content is so cheap to generate, the quality of training datasets is going to plummet.
Soon Reddit's users will want a cut of it for content they create.
Then all the places these users are copying content from will want their share.
There's no solution here. Either the web stays (mostly) open and free-for-all like it is now or everyone sets up their own little walls and ends the party.
Maybe they should lock their entire site behind a paywall.
The latter point isn't a bug it's a feature. Reddit is designed to function that way. The owners/execs have never expressed any interest in countering it outside of the limpest lip service imaginable.
Of course it’s fun to watch a turf war, and we can all cheer for our favorite team and quibble about who deserves a punch in the gut.
But, we also need to keep an eye on the horizon. This will change the world, even and especially the spaces that we currently rely on. Just look at what happened to legacy media when the aggregators came: it largely turned into blogspam and clickbait. Comment sections (like this one) aren’t perfect, but they’re a damn good pressure valve for regular people to interact with the world. What will happen to those, for instance?
That being said, I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible, with the better part of it being old or in niche subs on niche topics (like fandoms or memes) that the LLM trainers are avoiding anyway.
I am concerned with the opposite, that LLMs will shout into our comment sections. For instance, building a convincing sentiment manipulating bit network will be dirt cheap and easy. Even here on HN there’s a financial incentive to flood the place with bots to promote tech products.
> I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible
That’s fine, but the important thing is that most comments are written by real people who wasted time to write it.
Not just that, but language is used as a marker. You can tell when someone talks about a subject they know a lot about. This ability to judge for yourself, based on the content alone, will be eroded. Anything can sound convincing, even to the trained ear. This makes content-oriented communities like Reddit and HN particularly vulnerable.
James Madison wrote about it, saying the future owes deference to the past by carrying on the benefits it inherits from it.
I wonder if people could just social in place more; talk, make art, rather than stare at a glass obelisk all day should social media die. You think that’s ever happened in human history? I dunno.