So this is interesting, think of Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple. Their top goal is to use your user data to target you with ads and ultimately have you purchase a product or service. The better the return on ad spend the more advertisers spend on ads. It’s actually a misconception that these companies directly sell user data, in fact it’s in their best interest that they be the only one with your user data to give them an edge over their competitors in the ad business.

Reddit, on the other hand, has openly admitted to wanting to sell user created content through their API. I get the sentiment I guess, AI is being trained off their site, so they should get paid right? But AI isn’t being trained off Reddit’s thought, creativity, or intelligence, that belongs to the users, all Reddit owns is the servers and the UI. Reddit is about to actually do what we’ve been scared of other tech companies doing this entire time.

This honestly makes me more uncomfortable than targeted ads, because there’s no circular dependency or even arguable benefit to the users here, it’s one corporation taking your thought and selling it directly to another so they can both profit and build a tool that’ll mostly be used by other corporations to automate and profit. It’s all just another scam to get money out of our pockets.