Tag Archives: reddit

OpenAI Strikes Reddit Deal To Train Its AI On Your Posts



OpenAI has signed a deal for access to real-time content from Reddit’s data API, which means it can surface discussions from the site within ChatGPT and other new products. It’s an agreement similar to the one Reddit signed with Google earlier this year that was reportedly worth $60 million, The Verge reported. 

The deal will also “enable Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to Redditors and mods” and use OpenAI’s large language models to build applications. OpenAI has also signed up to become an advertising partner on Reddit.

Redditors have been vocal about how Reddit’s executives manage the platform before, and it remains to be seen how they’ll react to this announcement. More than 7,000 subreddits went dark in June 2023 after users protested Reddit’s changes to its API pricing. Recently, following news of a partnership between OpenAI and the programming message board Stack Overflow, people were suspended after trying to delete their posts.

No financial terms were revealed in the blog post announcing the arrangement, and neither company mentioned training data, either.

OpenAI posted: OpenAI and Reddit Partnership

Keeping the internet open is crucial, and part of being open means Reddit content needs to be accessible to those fostering human learning and researching ways to build community, belonging, and empowerment online. Reddit is a uniquely large and vibrant community that has long been an important space for conversation on the internet. Additionally, using LLM’s ML, and AI allow Reddit to improve the user experience for everyone.

In line with this, Reddit and OpenAI today announced a partnership to benefit both the Reddit and OpenAI user communities in a number of ways:

  • OpenAI will bring enhanced Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products, helping users discover and engage with Reddit communities. To do so, OpenAI will access Reddit’s Data API, which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit. This will enable OpenAI’s tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics.
  • This partnership will also enable Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to redditors and mods. Reddit will be building on OpenAI’s platform of AI models to bring its powerful vision to life.
  • Lastly, OpenAI will become a Reddit advertising partner.

Engadget reported OpenAI and Reddit announced a partnership on Thursday that will allow OpenAI to surface Reddit discussions to bring AI-powered features to its users. 

The partnership will “enable OpenAI’s tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics” both companies said in a joint statement.

The deal is similar to the one that Reddit signed with Google in February, and which is reportedly worth $60 million. A Reddit spokesperson declined to disclose the terms of the OpenAI deal to Engadget and OpenAI did not respond for comment.

OpenAI has been increasingly striking partnerships with publishers to get data to continue training its AI models. In the last few weeks alone, the company signed deals with the Financial Times and Dotdash Meredith. Last year, it also partnered with German publisher Axel Springer to train its models on news from Politico and Business Insider in the US and Bild and Die Welt in Germany.

In my opinion, it seems like OpenAI wants to partner with every site that allows people to post things. That’s likely good for OpenAI, but I have concerns about the content created by users who may or may not want to have their posts used by OpenAI.


The FTC Is Probing Reddit’s AI Licensing Deals



The Federal Trade Commission is looking into Reddit’s AI licensing deals, the company disclosed in paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is in the midst of its Initial Public Offering, said that the regulator notified Reddit officials that it “intended to request information and documents” about the company’s AI deals, Engadget reported.

According to Engadget, it’s not clear why the FTC is probing Reddit’s relatively new licensing business, but it seems to be in the early stages of its inquiry. “On March 14, 2024, we received a letter from the FTC advising us that the FTC’s staff is conducting a non-public inquiry focused on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models,” Reddit wrote in a filing. “Given the novel nature of these technologies and commercial arrangements, we are not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest in this area. We do not believe that we have engaged in any unfair or deceptive trade practice.”

CNBC reported that Reddit said on Friday that the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to the company about its data-licensing business related to the training of artificial intelligence systems.

According to CNBC, the 19-year-old company has filed to sell shares in it’s IPO at $31 to $34 each of an offering that would value the business at close to $6.5 billion. Reddit is trying to hit the public market during a historically slow period for tech IPOs. There hasn’t been a notable venture-backed tech debut since Instacart and Klaviyo in September. Before that, the market had been largely shuttered since late 2021.

Reddit’s revenue rose 20% last year to $804 million. About 98% of its sales came from advertising. The remaining 2% includes data licensing.

The Hill reported the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is probing Reddit’s plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) firms to utilize user-generated content to train their software, according to the social media company’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing Friday.

The inquiry comes just days before Reddit is slated to complete its initial public offering, after filing for it last month.

According to The Hill, Reddit announced in February that it would allow Google to train its AI models. The deal was announced in February, is worth $60 billion and would let Google use its data application programming interface (API).

Axios reported Reddit isn’t the only company receiving these so-called “hold letters,” according to a former FTC official who spoke with Axios on background.

According to Axios, this suggests that the commission is trying to get a handle on a rapidly changing industry and how that could affect both competition and consumer data privacy. It does not mean a formal investigation will be launched into Reddit or any other company.

In my opinion, it sounds like the FTC is very interested in what Reddit wants to do with the sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content to train AI models. I’m not sure that’s something the FTC will allow.


Reddit Downplays Risks Of Developer Backlash



Reddit’s long-awaited IPO is nearing, promising to be the largest social media IPO since Pinterest. But in the company’s S-1 filing Reddit fails to fully address complications that arose from changes to its developer platform and API pricing, which late last year led to site-wide protests, communities going dark, site stability issues, and traffic declines as moderators and Reddit users alike protested how the company was putting popular third-party apps out of business with increased API fees, TechCrunch reported.

According to TechCrunch, Reddit’s API pricing change were part of the company’s broader plan to lock down its corpus of user-generated content, which has been used to train AI models. On that front, Reddit’s IPO prospectus touts the promise of this growing business, noting that it’s already made $203 million so far from licensing its data to other companies.

However beneficial to Reddit’s bottom line, the money-hungry move led to significant backlash among Reddit’s community. After they learned that their favorite third-party Reddit apps — like Apollo, Narwhal, and others — were soon to become victims of Reddit’s fee changes, community members and moderators organized wide-scale protests.

Beware the apes, Reddit told the world in its IPO documents, Gizmodo reported. Put simply, the company warned potential investors that one of its subreddits, the infamous r/WallStreetBets, could make its stock price and volume extremely volatile — and there’s little Reddit can do about it.

According to Gizmodo, Reddit listed r/WallStreetBets as one of the possible risks to investing in the company in its S-1 form on Thursday, referencing the subreddit’s role in the meme stock craze of 2021, where retail investors banded together to raise the price of struggling companies like GameStop and AMC. The goal of r/WallStreetBets back then was to screw over professional investors on Wall Street and make them lose money for betting against certain companies.

It’s entirely possible that everyday people on r/WallStreetBets, a subreddit of 15 million retail investors who refer to themselves as “apes” and “degenerates,” and other online forum do the same thing with Reddit’s stock, the company stated.

Reddit wrote: “Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/wallstreetbets among retail investors, and the direct access by retail investors to broadly available trading platforms, the market price and trading platform, the market price and trading volume offer Class A common stock could experience extreme volatility for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomics or industry fundamentals…”

ArsTechnica reported Reddit filed to go public on Thursday, revealing various details of the social media company’s inner workings. Among the revelations, Reddit acknowledged the threat of future user protests and the value of third-party Reddit apps.

In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Reddit acknowledged that another such protest could hurt its pockets: “While these activities have not historically had a material impact on our business or results of operations, similar actions by moderators and/or their communities in the future could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects.

In my opinion, it appears that the Reddit CEO decided to mess around with the site, and is now entering the “finding out” stage.


Hackers Threaten To Leak 80GB of Confidential Data Stolen From Reddit



Hackers are threatening to release confidential data stolen from Reddit unless the company pays a ransom demand – and reverses its controversial API price hikes, TechCrunch reported.

According to TechCrunch, in a post on its dark web leak site, the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, claims to have stolen 80 gigabytes of compressed data from Reddit during a February breach of the company’s systems.

Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions, but confirmed that BlackCat’s claims relate to a cyber incident confirmed by Reddit on February 9. At the time, Reddit CEO Christopher Slowe, or KeyserSosa, said that hackers had accessed employee information and internal documents during a “highly-targeted” phishing attack. Slowe added that the company had “no evidence” that personal user data, such as passwords and accounts, had been stolen.

Bleeping Computer reported that on February 9th, Reddit disclosed that its systems were hacked on February 5th after an employee fell victim to a phishing attack.

According to Bleeping Computer, the phishing attack allows the threat actors to gain access to Reddit’s systems and steal internal documents, source code, employee data, and limited data about the company’s advertisers.

As first spotted by Dominic Alvieri and shared with Bleeping Computer, the ALPHV ransomware operation, more commonly known as BlackCat, now claims to be behind the February 5th cyberattack on Reddit.

In a “Reddit Files” post on the gang’s data leak site, the threat actors claim to have stolen 80 GB of compressed data from the company during the attack and now plan on leaking the data.

The threat actors say they attempted to contact Reddit twice, on April 13th and June 16th, demanding $4.5 million for the data to be deleted but did not receive a response.

Bleeping Computer posted a screenshot of the information from ALPHV. Here are some:

“…I told them in my first email that I would wait for their IPO to come along. But this seems like the perfect opportunity! We are very confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data.

“But I am very happy to know that the public will be able to read about the statistics they track about their users and all the interesting confidential data we took. Did you know that they also silently censor users? Along with artifacts from their GitHub!”

Engadget reported that BlackCat captured information through a scheme that saw employees receive “plausible sounding prompts” to visit a website designed just like Reddit’s intranet gateway. One individual fell for the trick, allowing hackers to steal their login details and second-factor tokens. The person then self-reported their mistake, and it’s believed that the security breach didn’t compromise Reddit users’ personal information.

In my opinion, this entire problem could have been avoided if the employee had taken a moment to consider whether they were facing a phishing attack. This makes me wonder if Reddit did not bother to teach their workers not to click links in any email they receive.


Reddit Is In Crisis



At midnight on Tuesday, the moderators of the Reddit community r/Gaming decided to go dark, CNBC reported. Dac Croach, who goes by the username Dacvack, and the subreddits’s other leaders hit the private button, initiating a 48-hour shutdown for the group’s more than 37 million members, along with anyone else who tried to access the community.

They were joining a large-scale protest against Reddit, which was about to implement a business change that would dramatically increase the price for third-party developers to use the company’s application programming interface, or API. In the preceding days, the r/Gaming moderators had run a poll indicating that users would support a shutdown. They discussed the results on Slack, and then went offline.

According to CNBC, the widespread protest of one of the internet’s most-trafficked sites started early this week and quickly expanded to more than 8,000 subreddits, including the widely popular r/Funny, with over 40 million members, along with r/Music and r/Science, each boasting over 30 million users.

Techradar reported that Reddit’s CEO wants to bring an end to the Reddit Blackout, but not by agreeing to reverse the company’s upcoming API changes. Instead, he has suggested that users should be able to vote out the moderators leading the protest that’s keeping large chunks of Reddit in the dark.

Thanks to the blackout, Reddit (and by extension Google) feels like a shell of itself for many users. The initially two-day-long protest has been extended by many of its subreddit communities, with 4,906 still set to private or restricted – including Reddit’s largest community r/Funny. While private users are unable to post or read content from the subreddit, restricted subreddits have merely banned new posts (but old posts can still be read).

TechCrunch reported that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is not backing down amid protests against API changes made by the platform. In interviews with The Verge, NBCNews, and NPR, Huffman defended business decisions made by the company to charge third-party apps saying the API wasn’t designed to support these clients.

According to TechCrunch, the Reddit co-founder also talked about protesting moderators, changing site rules, and profitability in these interviews. The platform is facing one of its strongest backlashes from the community, but the CEO seemingly doesn’t want to budge.

In response to Huffman’s comments, TechCrunch reported, that moderators are trying to find ways to make blackouts effective. Alternatively, some communities are also setting up servers on alternative sits like Lemmy and Kibn.

NPR reported that Reddit, which was founded in 2005, has long relied on advertising. It, along with peer social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snap, YouTube and others, has been dealing with a slowdown in digital ad spending, which has pressured the companies to find new ways to generate revenue.

Personally, I think that the people who participated in the blackout are not going to back down. The longer the protest lasts, the less likely that companies who want to place ads in Reddit will choose to do that. I think the CEO probably made a big mistake when he jacked up the price for third-party Reddit apps.


Reddit Says Protesting Communities Crashed The Site



The popular online forum Reddit experienced outages hours after thousands of Reddit communities launched a protest against its policy to charge third-party apps for data access, NBC News reported.

“A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some unexpected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” Reddit said in a statement to NBC News.

During an outage Monday morning, the website’s front page showed empty Reddit posts with the message: “Something went wrong. Just don’t panic.” Users were unable to load posts on it until the platform resumed working again.

According to NBC News, the #RedditBlackout hashtag started trending on Twitter after the blackout began, with more than 4,238 tweets associated with the term as of Monday. Reddit was trending with more than 112,000 searches on the social media platform. Twitter users as early as 9 a.m. noted that Reddit was experiencing technical issues.

One user’s tweet about the Reddit outage received more than 80,000 views within an hour. “Nice to see even Reddit itself getting in on the Reddit Blackout today,”, the user wrote.

The Verge reported that in an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the “noise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass.

The Verge received a copy of an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff. Here is part of the memo:

“…Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do not anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are to stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail…

…I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful or wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations…”

In my opinion, this memo is a bit shortsighted. The CEO thinks that this will blow over and things will go right back to “normal”. Based on the sheer number of subreddits that have gone private, it appears that many people are not thrilled with Reddits’ decisions right now. As such, I think the private subreddits could stay private for a long time.


Thousands Of Subreddits Go Dark In Protest



The version of Reddit we’ll see over the next few days may be a shell of itself. More than 100 subreddits have already gone dark, and thousands more plan to follow in protest of Reddit’s coming API changes, according to the website Reddark, which is tracking the protests, The Verge reported.

The protests are happening over API changes that will force many third-party apps, like Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, to shut down. Frustration was already brewing in the community as developers began reacting to the changes this week, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s responses in recent days have only escalated the community’s pushback.

The Verge also reported that most of the subreddits have pledged to go private – preventing outside access – for 48 hours, though some, like the 26 million-member community r/videos, have said they’ll remain private indefinitely. According to this post on r/ModCoord, protests will end when Reddit addresses issues with the API, improves accessibility for blind people, and creates “parity in access to NSFW content.”

The Guardian reported that some of the largest communities on Reddit will lock their doors in protest at the social news site’s decision to try and monetise access to its data.

More than 3,000 subreddits have joined the protest, and will go “private” on Monday, preventing anyone outside the community from seeing their posts.

According to The Guardian, forums such as r/todayilearned, r/funny and r/gaming, with more than 30 million subscribers apiece, have signed up to join the campaign, while others with 1 million plus members, including r/iPhone and r/unexpected, have already closed their doors in anticipation of the strike.

The protest is over a set of forthcoming changes to the site’s “API”, which lets other companies use reddit data in their own products and services.

The changes will introduce huge charges for “premium access”, effectively killing off popular third-party Reddit apps such as Apollo, which let users browse the site with a customizable interface.

Reddark appears to be keeping track of subreddits that are going dark or read-only on June 12th and after. You can scroll through Reddark to see which ones are going dark. Above the list of subreddits, it says “5497/7047 subreddits are currently dark.”

Mashable reported that CEO and co-founder of Reddit Steve Huffman stated: “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”

Personally, I am in favor of the Reddark protest. The CEO appears to be interested in selling the data created by Reddit users, and wants to price-out the app makers. Thousands of subreddits going dark is a good way to do a protest. If no one posts anything on Reddit, the CEO won’t get any new data to steal and sell.