SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant’s artificial intelligence models, three people familiar with the matter said.
The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources.
The deal underscores how Reddit, which is preparing for a high-profile stock market launch, is seeking to generate new revenue amid fierce competition for advertising dollars from the likes of TikTok and Meta Platform’s Facebook.
The sources were not authorized to speak to media and declined to be identified.
Reddit and Google declined to comment. Bloomberg previously reported Reddit’s content deal without naming the buyer.
Last year, Reddit said it would charge companies for access to its application programming interface (API) - the means by which it distributes its content. The agreement with Google is its first reported deal with a big AI company.
San Francisco-based Reddit, which has been looking at a stock float for more than three years, is preparing to make its initial public offering filing this week, which would detail its financials for the first time to potential IPO investors. The filing could be available as early as Thursday, two of the sources said.
The company, which was valued at about $10 billion in a funding round in 2021, is seeking to sell about 10% of its shares in the offering, Reuters has previously reported.
Reddit’s stock market launch would mark the first IPO of a major social media company since Pinterest floated its shares in 2019.
Makers of AI models have been busy clinching deals with content owners in recent months, aiming to diversify their training data beyond large scrapes of the internet. That practice is rife with potential copyright issues as many content creators have alleged that their content was used without permission.
Founded in 2005 by web developer Steve Huffman and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, Reddit is known for its manifold niche discussion groups, some of which boast tens of millions of members.
Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco, Echo Wang in New York and Martin Coulter in London; Additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Anirban Sen, Krystal Hu and Edwina Gibbs
Currently Privacy Badger will de-mangle Google-mangled links in their search results. You can see it discussed in this episode of Security Now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suT0E53jX40 Here are the show notes (ctrl+f for “badger” and you’ll have all the information you need): https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-945-Notes.pdf
I wasn’t using it until I saw this so I installed it despite using uBlock Origin.
They want you to do just that: https://community.signalusers.org/t/public-username-testing-staging-environment/56866 That link has instructions on how to sign up.
And remember there’s a Duck Duck Go onion service: https://duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion Proof: search on duckduckgo for “duckduckgo onion” and a widget appears in the search results.
Alternatively, set your tor browser to always prioritize onion addresses in the settings.
Tangential, but Lemmy is filled with smart people so I’m going to ask: is it possible to legally make it impossible for wireless signals to work within your own home? That is, how would one dampen access to wireless networks? Would this require illegal use of signal jamming devices as I imagine a Faraday cage would be too difficult to make in a room.
Edit: where else on Lemmy could I ask this sort of question?
I agree with you. Email is flawed and not appropriate for modern communication.
If you want the messages to be written in letter-like format, then you can write them that way. No need to make it chatty if you don’t want to communicate that way.
Email shares far too much metadata and should be used just for account-updates, account-control (password reset, MFA, and so on), etc.
Otherwise I just push everyone to Signal, since it’s normie-friendly and already using quantum-safe encryption.
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To the OP’s question: yes, I trust Proton. They can’t access my data if they wanted to. They’re a lot better than competing companies.
Check out some of the steps they’ve been taking to improve OpenPGP and go down to “Upcoming improvements” to see their future plans: https://proton.me/blog/openpgp-crypto-refresh
And, remember, they are more than just an email company: https://proton.me/blog
I just copied the title of the Reuters article. It was their exclusive reporting.