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Reddit says it's made $203M so far licensing its data
(techcrunch.com)
Our data, you mean?
well, not mine. i used a script to replace all of my comments with gibberish before i deleted them and then my account. if they went back and restored my comments, then all they'll get is comments full of gibberish, especially since i overwrote them 3 times before deleting them, just in case they tried to roll back to the previous version.
have fun with that!
I like your style, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they keep every single version.
Here’s the thing: Nothing in Reddit’s history indicates that they are that competent.
I put my account's comment through a mass-delete app around the time of the big protest, and a couple weeks later I found every single one was restored.
People can be incompetent for years and then suddenly start figuring things out.
i bet they do now, but i've checked back now and then, and all of my comments and posts are most assuredly gone.
edit: i've gone back to check some old haunts, place i know i've commented, and i did some seaching with google using my old usernames, as google uses its cache to match to the posts\comments, even though they're not there any more.
i see old posts that are graveyards of deleted comments, some with simply deleted accounts, and many others where both the account and comment are deleted. i don't see any gibberish comments. the ones i know are mine (because replies quote the comment above, which i recognize as mine), are all just deleted in their entirety, so it seems they didn't do comment versioning, at least not past the first edit. i see no posts under any former username of mine.
the efforts to scrub my content from reddit last May appears to have worked. sadly, since the API lockdown, those tools no longer work.
Just because it shows [deleted] doesn't mean the data were deleted. That is most likely just a flag for the comment.
They most likely keep every save since they decided to do the sell the data thing. Why would google pay them for what google could easily scrape other than having the full history?
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Yeah.....all that comment data isn't really that large. They'll have backups captured for likely several years back. All you can view is the info on the current live servers. You might have kept them from getting like 3 months worth of your comments at best.
I did the same, but we're both fools if we think reddit didn't keep every character we typed (yet alone submitted) in a private, proprietary database.
We weren't paid for our data. We were given access to a website free of charge. The consent we gave was supposed to be for the operation of the website, not for training AI.
They should fucking pay us.
LOL. I did the same. And I confirmed many months later that the comments were not restored.
Now I hear that Google wants to train their AI on reddit content. Haha. Good luck with that, Lorem Ipsum! 😁
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Our data
Correct, our data.
- Spez
In other news, spez's compensation from reddit last year was $193 million, and it's COO got a cool $93 million.
C'mon, spez, tell us again how horrible it's been that reddit's never made a profit.
Just saw this on yours truly. Fucking hilarious considering they had the balls to IPO with that sack of rocks weighing down the entire company.
So Reddit charges users to create content (paid premium or by showing ads). And then it sells that content.
Making money both going and coming.
And it also asks reddit users to invest in reddit
loool
I wonder if there is any legal standing for users to sue Reddit for a fair share of those profits. That’d be nice if it could happen. But i suspect, probably not.
Their TOS says they own your content in any current or future formats or derivative works.
I’d say Reddit would win.
Their TOS says they own your content in any current or future formats or derivative works.
Their ToS could say they own you and your children and grandchildren, but that doesn't make it enforceable.
If I post a frame from the movie Akira on Reddit would any reasonable person suggest that they own not only that frame, but also the entire movie that it came from as a derivative work? There is a glut of second-hand data just like that all over Reddit, Twitter, and every other social media network, and I'm willing to bet that's also part of what's being sold.
But hey... I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the idea that they automatically "own" the things that people post on their website is ridiculous. It's a bit like UPS or FedEx saying they own the contents of your package while delivering it.
It is true that Reddit does not hold a valid license to content that is
- Sufficiently long-form, unique etc. to be copyrightable, and
- posted by someone other than the copyright holder or someone with a sufficient license.
However, as far as I understand it, the extent to which Reddit—a content provider and social network—is legally required to remedy this is to comply with DMCA requests and review reported content. Perhaps there is a higher standard that I am not aware of?
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The TOS shouldn't hold up in court. A contract must be an exchange of two things, eg money for a product or service. You can't say "Our service is free of charge!!!" And then in the fine print "(((But also you agree to give us everything we can take free of charge)))".
The issue is how everyone does it. Facebook and Google started when data had no value, now they're amongst the wealthiest businesses in the world. Now, Microsoft have joined in, *even though you already pay for their products and services anyway!"
However, the other aspect is that everyone is a victim. Lawmakers are the victim. They still haven't quite yet realised how much is being taken from them (at least $50 per year, probably more like $1,000 per year if not more for prominent figures) but they are still being abused.
It's like that form of bank fraud, where the criminal takes pennies from accounts, hoping the user won't notice and the bank will write it off. Do it to enough people and enough times and you can make millions. They do this to everyone and they make billions.
Either the data is public domain and they don't have to pay for it, but also cannot charge others for it, or the data is private and they must pay the author a fair share.
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Yeah, probably not. When you sign up and agreed to their ToS, they don't "own" your content, but you grant them a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use it without compensation.
From their ToS:
Any ideas, suggestions, and feedback about Reddit or our Services that you provide to us are entirely voluntary, and you agree that Reddit may use such ideas, suggestions, and feedback without compensation or obligation to you
Source: A pretty good post on r/HFY, though it is on Reddit, so don't click it if you don't want to :P
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There is legal standing, IMO. You can't take something without consideration, and access to the website was granted free of charge while the data collection was squirrelled away in the fine print. That isn't a lawful contract, the fine print is for technicalities about the main transaction of X in exchange for Y. You can't say "we'll give you X for free!!!” then sneak into the fine print "(((you also give us Y for free)))". The structure is clearly deceptive in a manner that is designed to prevent a fair assessment of the value being exchanged.
Insurers have to provide a "key facts page" where they summarise in plain English what you're paying for. The fine print gives the detail, but the front page is still "we give you X in exchange for Y".
You can't build a car without paying for the nuts and bolts. Tech companies have placed themselves amongst the wealthiest businesses in the world without paying for the nuts and bolts we provide.
Hell, even Microsoft is in on it now, even though you pay for Windows and Office 365!
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... and thats why Wikipedia is non-profit.
Seeing human (even shitpost) achievements get monetized (in the most sucky manner) one by one is sad af.
I hope my fuck Spez comments are useful.
Now AIs will fuck Spez for all eternity.
Millennia from now Fuckspez! will be the standard greeting between all sentient species in the galactic federation. It will be even used in machine code as a handshake for establishing initial contact between two subspace relays.
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Reddit says it's made $203M so far licensing ~~its~~ our data
Fixed that for them.
There's your "tragedy of the commons" fallacy on a stick, folks - the proles where managing reddit so well that huffman had to break it in order to make it more vulnerable to the parasites.
It's data?! You mean our data
This is helpful of them, once the EU court fines them, we can quickly calculate how much that will be.
These are totally the signs of a stable and profitable company.
I wonder if they will ever consider paying the users for the content they provide that constitutes "its" data. 🤔
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A good reminder to go back and edit all your comments to [removed] if you didn't do so when you first left.
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How? They're under heavy scrutiny from the FTC over the $60M/month Google deal. Where did the extra $140M come from?
Spez will be happy to know his payout is covered, company is still going to be broke though.
Probably doesn't matter, but this is why I deleted my account instead of just locking it up.
With google being the partner i bet the deal wont mention they cant use older backups of reddit that they most certainly have.
This is why we need better data laws in the US. If I want everything I've ever said on your site to disappear both instantly and forever, I should have that option.
I'm sure you're right about that. All parties involved are scumbags, after all.
"its data".
Ah yes... of course.
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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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