There is no moral high ground for Reddit as it seeks to capitalise on user data | John Naughton
www.theguardian.com
CEO Steve Huffman says tech giants should not be able to trawl Reddit’s huge store of data for free. But that information came from users, not the company

CEO Steve Huffman says tech giants should not be able to trawl Reddit’s huge store of data for free. But that information came from users, not the company

That “corpus of data” is the content posted by millions of Reddit users over the decades. It is a fascinating and valuable record of what they were thinking and obsessing about. Not the tiniest fraction of it was created by Huffman, his fellow executives or shareholders. It can only be seen as belonging to them because of whatever skewed “consent” agreement its credulous users felt obliged to click on before they could use the service.

Ouch

  • LittleKerrEnglish
    55•2 years ago

    Wait, you mean there’s people -actual real and not-paid by who knows people- who believes that the official Reddit app is superior?? I know a few that believe it’s not thaaat bad, but ‘superior’? Lmao

    • BalderEnglish
      29•2 years ago

      I see this kind of behavior happen a lot online, and asked ChatGPT about it:

      Yes, there is a term that describes this phenomenon. It’s called “oppositional belief perseverance” or “belief polarization.” This term refers to the tendency of individuals to cling to their initial beliefs even when presented with evidence that contradicts those beliefs. In the context you described, someone may initially take the opposite side of a discussion due to an opposition bias, but over time, they may start to internalize and genuinely believe the opposing viewpoint, thereby demonstrating belief polarization.

    • SpaceBarEnglish
      15•2 years ago

      People can convince themselves of anything.

    • @LaunchesKayaksEnglish
      10•2 years ago

      My cousin thinks it’s superior. I asked him if he has used 3PAs and he said no. I told him it was too late to start, but that he should check out Lemmy and the fediverse

      • StovetopEnglish
        3•2 years ago

        There are millions of people out there who just accept all this crap as normal. I just don’t know how people can feel so comfortable about being constantly bought and sold online.

        Ads in general skeeve me out. In the early days (2005-ish?), while visiting a video game forum I used to frequent, my computer was infected with malware delivered by a malicious ad. I didn’t even interact with it—the page just loaded, acted erratically, and before I knew it, my system was completely locked down. My only recourse was a full wipe of that PC.

        Since then, I’ve never trusted ads. And even now that some ads have gotten more “legitimate” (thanks to these five secrets advertisers don’t want you to know!), they still seem sketchy just knowing how much money goes into them. Do banner ads on a website even result in more sales? I don’t know, but obviously they must be conning someone out of their money because they pay so much out.