this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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The only way reddit is worth $15 billion is if they have plans to sell user data to AI companies.
Nah, they don't need to do that when they can already influence user decisions by faking a consensus.
They "fuzz" votes. They give themselves "gold" and promote articles. Then they have the first few comments all say the same opinion in a few different ways, and suddenly people start agreeing for fear of being "in the out-group". It takes so much effort to flip the tone of the components section once it's got a vibe.
If not, delete and restart until it works.
As a public company, not disclosing that they manufacuter conversation and opinion with fake data and instead saying it's all natural would be fraud and they would face fines or go to jail if discovered.
Edit: reddit could turn a blind eye to others doing it, but they cant do it themselves and say otherwise.
When was the last time you saw anyone in charge of a 15 billion dollar company go to jail for fraud?
Theranos had a 10b valuation at one point?
Oh, and FTX
You gave it backwards. As a public company, if they can make money doing that but choose not to, they can be sued by the shareholders.
I don't think there's any problems with doing it, as long as they aren't claiming otherwise.
If they lie about it it becomes fraud.
Edit: And what are they going to do once asked on a public earnings call? Lie?
Edit: Falsely posting stuff might also open up a can of worms around the site no longer being protected by being user generated content?
Yea imagine for a small country like slovakia πΈπ° or some crap a few thousand dollars can go a long long way for a local election or whatever through reddit xitter facebook
It's scary how easy it is to just completely control the conversation with a few astroturf comments near yours. Suddenly people reading the astroturf start coming at you with the same talking points because every single individual on reddit is a free thinker.
I bet it'll be like the old days where they use bots to post fake comments to appear more populated.
My conspiracy theory is that this is half the reason they disabled the API. They want it to happen, but don't want to be on the hook for overtly deceiving investors, so as a workaround with plausible deniability they hobble the ability of users to do anything about third party spam.
I don't think that's ever actually stopped.
Plans? I'd almost be surprised if they weren't already.
I don't know how far along they are but I know it's why they restricted API access for mobile web apps.
Too late, the AI companies already got that data for free
If reddit user data is worth 15 billion i'll eat my goddamn shoes.
Yes, that is literally the plan.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/30/reddit-moderator-protest-communities-social-media?
I think they basically blocked their API for third-party apps and push everyone to use their app for this reason.