[WillieCubed]

At this point, it's being a massive repository of (ostensibly) human perspectives that can be used to train LLMs and perform search. Google [1] appears to think so. For all its faults as a platform that relies on volunteer (read: unpaid) moderators, the website is structured in a way that makes it very useful for continually curating human knowledge of the world. It's unclear whether Reddit can deliver long-term value like this, though, especially depending on one's perspective about to what degree generative AI is a bubble.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080165/google-reddit-ai...

[shiroiushi]

If aliens come to Earth and look at Reddit posts to decide whether we're worth establishing friendly contact with, or destroying to build a hyperspace bypass, we're doomed.

[dleeftink]

> human knowledge of the world

It definitely comprises a fair share, but I think it is a stretch to say Reddit fosters continuous curation of world knowledge. It offers a space for some very particular niches and memetic content, but a lot of human world knowledge is encoded elsewhere, e.g. internal communication channels, personal correspondence, working notes, journals, wiki's, QA-sites or may not even be encoded at all.

World knowledge would also require broader demographics and more non-English language content, as well as other means of communication beyond text-based interactions.

[jnwatson]

The $60 million a year that Google is paying amounts to 7% of 2023 revenue. Perhaps they could get 3 or 4 more customers at that rate. There's just not enough juice there.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

> used to train LLMs

Uh-oh.