This sucks—and even more so because the Reddit company is willing to play nice with AI to get their pretty penny.

This sucks. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Reddit here, which has shown over the past few years a dedicated interest in monetizing its userbase.

Reddit is a really interesting example of digital labor issues as they relate to both social media and AI. I wonder how things will go over the next few years.

I doubt I have time today for a longer, more nuanced post, so please enjoy this subtweet: Anyone whose takeaway from the University of Zurich Reddit study is “AI is good at convincing people!” and doesn’t even mention the HUGE ethical issues in passing is missing the point.

WAIT. They prompt engineered the AI tool to disregard informed consent and ethical concerns?

I’ve been waiting for 404 (or someone else) to report on this so that I could rage post it (and assign it in future classes). What a terrible breach of research ethics.

introduction and history

I’ve experimented for a while with consuming a range of media through an RSS reader. I don’t remember how long I subscribed to Feedbin, but being able to follow both Twitter accounts and email newsletters in the same app as my RSS subscriptions was a real game-changer. Eventually, I jumped ship for NetNewsWire—I don’t remember all the reasons behind the switch, but knowing that I could keep subscribing to Twitter and start following some subreddits was definitely a major factor.

Funny meme, depressing reality.

There are few phrases grosser than “monetizing our user base.”

Look, I’ve never been really into Reddit, but I’m still really disappointed in the company. This sucks.

C’mon, Reddit.

It baffles me when platforms think “oh, but we can help you see more relevant ads” is a selling point. Also, “not sharing data outside Reddit” doesn’t help either—it’s still an invasion of privacy.

Good focus on the digital labor aspects of this whole thing. I sympathize with Reddit for not wanting to provide free value for generative AI (this is one of the trickiest parts of that conversation), but Reddit’s users are right to balk at providing free value for the platform.

C’mon Reddit.

Perhaps most interesting thing here is official comment from Reddit. It’s not quite “auto-reply with a poop emoji territory,” but it might actually be worse?

I’ve linkblogged a lot of stuff on Reddit lately, but this is a good summary and reaction, so I’m adding it to the list.

Lots of ugh here.

I’m glad this article points out how much unpaid work mods do to make Reddit a place people want to go. They arguably add more value to the platform than employees do, and this strikes me as a bad move.

Reddit’s response continues to feel tonedeaf and sketchy to me.

Here’s Masnick saying some of my thoughts but better—and adding some observations I would not have come to on my own.

Feels pretty sleazy to me.

I get that any platform has to pay its bills, but Huffman keeps coming off as a real jerk.

Keep it up, subreddits!

What I appreciate about coverage of this from The Verge and Techdirt is the way that it draws attention to questions of digital labor.

Good for them. Let’s hope it makes a difference.