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Wow, reddit found a way to make themselves even less useful somehow. After the API fiasco, that seemed like it'd be pretty hard to do.

wvenable 2y ago
But, apparently, they did finally find a way to make money.
- LunaSea 2y ago
  Barely enough to pay the CEO
- jasode 2y ago
  >But, apparently, they did finally find a way to make money. The most recent 10-K financial results 2024-03-31 (filed 2024-05-08) shows they actually lost money: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1713445 https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1713445 (For 2024-Q1, Reddit lost -$575 million on revenue of $242 M.) If the quoted "$60 million deal"[1] from Feb 2024 is accurate, that small amount from Google may not be enough for Reddit to turn a profit. It remains to be seen what the Q2 or Q3 financials will show. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+ai+deal+reddit https://www.google.com/search?q=google+ai+deal+reddit
  - wuiheerfoj 2y ago
    Wow, perhaps I’m naive but what the hell are they spending over $800M a year on? That seems an obscene amount for a glorified message board. I just read they have 2000 employees which is also puzzling to me
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      They were a public good currently larping as a for profit concern now run by a vanity and wealth driven executive driving it into the ground while it flails to monetize when that is likely incompatible with the entity. Compare and contrast to say, HN, run on two servers in a colo with less than a handful of mods.
    - splwjs 2y ago
      it's not just a message board, it's an influence machine. They need to make sure the stuff they want people to think is posted often and has a big number next to it, they need to make sure things that people like are associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do and things that people don't like are never associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do. They need to make sure that people who say the wrong things are silenced or persuaded to leave, etc etc. Man they probably have at least one contact in at least one intelligence agency and they have to make sure not to run afoul of that contact. Like the news isn't just a list of what happened recently, political debates aren't just two guys talking, and reddit/twitter aren't just message boards.
    - alephxyz 2y ago
      They spent 400M on R&D this quarter, which means more "personalisation"/ad targeting and probably cooking up some DOA chatbot/assistant product that's costing them a ton in compute
    - some_random 2y ago
      Almost 200 million is in CEO compensation https://www.statista.com/statistics/1453196/reddit-top-executives-compensations/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1453196/reddit-top-execu...
Hikikomori 2y ago
The only things it does for me is forcing me to use Google as a large amount of the answers I need is on reddit.
- immibis 2y ago
  That's what Google is paying them for :)
- brewdad 2y ago
  So then this gambit worked. It sucks and I hate it. I will continue to use DDG/Bing first but it looks like I'll be hitting up Google more often too.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > The only things it does for me is forcing me to use Google Startpage, Kagi and Lukol are 3 that source from Google. I imagine there are others.
stainablesteel 2y ago
which is ironic because pre-AI every solid piece of obscure information and non-programming question usually had an answer on reddit, its an extremely valuable dataset looking back. but moving forward i think its only going to become less valuable and people will probably manually/custom-scrape all the questions out of worthwhile subreddits and open up their data for free
- splwjs 2y ago
  When I was young, my brother knew a guy who was really into movies. If you wanted to know about a movie you couldn't remember, you would go talk to that guy. For a while, the internet had an end-run play that made that guy less useful. You can just go on the internet for obscure movie information, buddy. But now it seems like knowing a movie guy is going to be the only way to get a real person's opinion on movies. The internet is about to forget everything without a profit motive and just start telling you that the latest product from a monolith corp like disney is the only movie worth watching. If someone scrapes all the useful movie opinions off of reddit and spends their time crafting it into a usable format, that guy's probably got a company. But not Bill. Bill's just a guy you can know or not know. You can't monetize knowing Bill. Sidenote that's probably why it irked me so bad when some bozo coined the phrase "social capital".
splwjs 2y ago
If they kept their API open then by now the entirety of the site would be ai slop that was built with chatgpt and launched with the api. Then again most of what that site does is just blend and regurgitate the information that's currently on it anyway.
- miohtama 2y ago
  Those AI bots would likely to be more intelligent commentors than Redditors
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
The API changes and these robots.txt were part of the same strategy - preventing third parties from scrapping their data and reducing the AI generated content that makes it into their data. So they can sell that data and make money.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Their dataset is already polluted with misinformation campaigns and shilling
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  > their data Love how it's their data when it might make them money but not their data if they get sued.
  - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
    That's fair. I agree with you that in some sense it is user data. And that Reddit is operating unethically.

wvenable 2y ago

But, apparently, they did finally find a way to make money.

LunaSea 2y ago
Barely enough to pay the CEO
jasode 2y ago
>But, apparently, they did finally find a way to make money. The most recent 10-K financial results 2024-03-31 (filed 2024-05-08) shows they actually lost money: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1713445 https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1713445 (For 2024-Q1, Reddit lost -$575 million on revenue of $242 M.) If the quoted "$60 million deal"[1] from Feb 2024 is accurate, that small amount from Google may not be enough for Reddit to turn a profit. It remains to be seen what the Q2 or Q3 financials will show. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+ai+deal+reddit https://www.google.com/search?q=google+ai+deal+reddit
- wuiheerfoj 2y ago
  Wow, perhaps I’m naive but what the hell are they spending over $800M a year on? That seems an obscene amount for a glorified message board. I just read they have 2000 employees which is also puzzling to me
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    They were a public good currently larping as a for profit concern now run by a vanity and wealth driven executive driving it into the ground while it flails to monetize when that is likely incompatible with the entity. Compare and contrast to say, HN, run on two servers in a colo with less than a handful of mods.
  - splwjs 2y ago
    it's not just a message board, it's an influence machine. They need to make sure the stuff they want people to think is posted often and has a big number next to it, they need to make sure things that people like are associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do and things that people don't like are never associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do. They need to make sure that people who say the wrong things are silenced or persuaded to leave, etc etc. Man they probably have at least one contact in at least one intelligence agency and they have to make sure not to run afoul of that contact. Like the news isn't just a list of what happened recently, political debates aren't just two guys talking, and reddit/twitter aren't just message boards.
  - alephxyz 2y ago
    They spent 400M on R&D this quarter, which means more "personalisation"/ad targeting and probably cooking up some DOA chatbot/assistant product that's costing them a ton in compute
  - some_random 2y ago
    Almost 200 million is in CEO compensation https://www.statista.com/statistics/1453196/reddit-top-executives-compensations/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1453196/reddit-top-execu...

Hikikomori 2y ago

The only things it does for me is forcing me to use Google as a large amount of the answers I need is on reddit.

immibis 2y ago
That's what Google is paying them for :)
brewdad 2y ago
So then this gambit worked. It sucks and I hate it. I will continue to use DDG/Bing first but it looks like I'll be hitting up Google more often too.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> The only things it does for me is forcing me to use Google Startpage, Kagi and Lukol are 3 that source from Google. I imagine there are others.

stainablesteel 2y ago

which is ironic because pre-AI every solid piece of obscure information and non-programming question usually had an answer on reddit, its an extremely valuable dataset looking back. but moving forward i think its only going to become less valuable and people will probably manually/custom-scrape all the questions out of worthwhile subreddits and open up their data for free

splwjs 2y ago
When I was young, my brother knew a guy who was really into movies. If you wanted to know about a movie you couldn't remember, you would go talk to that guy. For a while, the internet had an end-run play that made that guy less useful. You can just go on the internet for obscure movie information, buddy. But now it seems like knowing a movie guy is going to be the only way to get a real person's opinion on movies. The internet is about to forget everything without a profit motive and just start telling you that the latest product from a monolith corp like disney is the only movie worth watching. If someone scrapes all the useful movie opinions off of reddit and spends their time crafting it into a usable format, that guy's probably got a company. But not Bill. Bill's just a guy you can know or not know. You can't monetize knowing Bill. Sidenote that's probably why it irked me so bad when some bozo coined the phrase "social capital".

splwjs 2y ago

If they kept their API open then by now the entirety of the site would be ai slop that was built with chatgpt and launched with the api. Then again most of what that site does is just blend and regurgitate the information that's currently on it anyway.

miohtama 2y ago
Those AI bots would likely to be more intelligent commentors than Redditors

abdullahkhalids 2y ago

The API changes and these robots.txt were part of the same strategy - preventing third parties from scrapping their data and reducing the AI generated content that makes it into their data. So they can sell that data and make money.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Their dataset is already polluted with misinformation campaigns and shilling
AlexandrB 2y ago
> their data Love how it's their data when it might make them money but not their data if they get sued.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  That's fair. I agree with you that in some sense it is user data. And that Reddit is operating unethically.