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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Gotta cash in on the AI hype while you can

Reddit is among the most-trafficked websites on the planet. Its value has little to do with AI and everything with attention.

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2010 called, they want their social graph back:

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1atb6ac/reddit_has...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/reddit-says-its-made-203m-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/15/ftc-investigating-reddit-ove...

> 2010 called, they want their social graph back

Attention sells ads. A social graph is something else. About as relevant as yelling about AI potential. Maybe it’s there. But again, a separate argument.

which is incidentally why the entire place is a barren content wasteland these days, full at first glance but quickly becomes apparent it is just astroturfed to shit, with every comment thread being bombarded by various companies and political groups' pr goons or LLM powered bots trying to sway public opinion.

I never had a great deal of love for reddit but "the entire place is a barren content wasteland" is a pretty sweeping generalisation that you cannot possibly be in a position to make. I only hang out on a couple of subs and they're lively, full of nice characters, and well-moderated. I'd be very surprised if I have somehow discovered the only oases of normality in a barren content desert.

I have noticed that any time I encounter a post from an r/{placename} sub, it appears to be full of the most irritating, racist shit-stirrers but I just steer clear of those subs altogether.

The problem is you need to wander from oasis to oasis, as oppose d to circumnavigating shitholes. To me that seems like a wastelnd.

This metaphor is getting a bit tortured and depends on me - having stumbled randomly into a few subreddits that are cool - being a statistical anomaly. I dunno, enjoy the site or don’t - no skin of my nose either way - but your experience is certainly not universal.

I only use it for either enthusiast related things (audio/fashion/sports discussion/tv shows) or for general research, like travel planning.

I've never noticed this type of activity, so it's definitely not the "entire place". I assume this is largely relegated to the top level subreddits?

I have mixed feelings about all the crap going on behind the scenes with this company. For the most part, it's been the only place I can get relatively unbiased takes and info outside of more specialized enthusiast forums.

I also appreciate the niche subs, but sweeping generalisations generally only fit the sweeping general no? Of course reddit has its communities, my concern is the site you get before you put a lot of effort into curating your feed is largly at the mercy of lobbying groups which reddit doesnt combat but actively facilitates despite pretending to present community / real people opinions / poaitions. It leads to accounts spamming the same popular content and comments to farm up karma and build credibility for accounts that are later to be used to sway public opinion. Its misleading and drives away genuine interactions.

That is meaningless if you haven't in nearly two decades found effective way to monetize that traffic.

> meaningless if you haven't in nearly two decades found effective way to monetize that traffic

Sure. Not relevant in the context of $800+ million of revenue [1].

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024...

forsure. I think it was like top 3 recently. i dont know if the numbers came out but the deal with google to let them use data to train their AI had to be a pretty penny tho.

This is certainly an issue, that companies can sell other people's IP in this way, ie sell UGC.

Seems like a loopholes that civilised society should close.

Reddits ad system blows. They havent monetized shit other than selling data to AI companies, so yes, its value is very dependent on how much those companies will pay at the moment.

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