Reddit has struck a $60m deal with Google that lets the search giant train AI models on its posts
Reddit has struck a $60m deal with Google that lets the search giant train AI models on its posts

Reddit has struck a $60m deal with Google that lets the search giant train AI models on its posts

Its a bit old, but I just learned it via the retro-dodo article here: https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/
Is it just me or are 60 million a ridiculously small price for that whole dataset?
Perhaps, but not worth buying if you can't make profit or keep it from your competition.
60M is for over almost 20 years of data, but once it's ingested, google will only want new content. Next year, it'll be more like 3M if the dataset isn't poisoned by bots or the AI fad hasn't collapsed. Reddit will struggle with finances again and users will suffer. At least that's my prediction.
Spez has already grifted his money out of the initial stock pump so it literally doesn't matter. Reddit could shut down tomorrow and he'd be happy as a clam.
LOL. Do you realize that makes you sound like Boomers talking about the internet in the late 90's and early 00's?
I wonder if Google's unlimited legal budget plays a role. Not a lawyer, so probably way off here...
But, for example, reddit's success in part depends on Google ingesting their data --- reddit shows up in Google searches all the time, which can only happen if Google uses reddit's content. So reddit telling Google "you can't use our content" doesn't work, and they need to say something like, "you can use our content for search results but you can't consume it as training data."
This is a pretty straightforward statement/request/demand, but one could imagine Google lawyers maliciously complying and throwing their hands up dramatically, claiming "well we use some amount of AI in our search results, so if we can't use your content for AI training then we can't risk using it for search results." Which would, I imagine, really, really hurt reddit (no Google results would be catastrophic I suspect).
So, perhaps the "low" 60M figure is just Google using their leverage.
Or not. As a random person on the Internet, I can say I'm probably not contributing anything meaningful here...
I'm personally curious whether Reddit actually has any ability to protect that database. I don't remember Reddit TOS, but usually those things give them license to use and copy the data, maybe even to sell it, but not actually the copyright on it. So if someone made a Reddit scraper and copied the comments, wouldn't only the actual commenter be able to sue?
$60M may be reflecting that, in that it's more a convenience fee to shield Google against individual Redditors going after them than something that Reddit itself could actually sue over.
Considering it's all full of Nazis and bots, and if you get to filter all of them out you're left with reposts and low quality memes followed by comments that represent the hostile side of each of us.... I'd say anything over $5 is a good deal for spez.
Now, I hope Google uses this data exclusively for detecting inappropriate answers. Can you imagine it giving answers based on the endless threads i of " I'm not your mate, bro; I'm not your bro, dude.....".
It's more than they were making from third party apps, hence the ridiculous API fees.