For more than 20 years, Reddit has been one of the most useful places on the Internet. It’s easily one of the best places to find answers to questions about the best bookshelf speakers or to just post about your favourite TV show or podcast.
Even if you’re just wondering whether anyone has ever experienced the same obscure issue you’re trying to fix, there’s a good chance someone on Reddit has an answer. And, maybe the best part, you don’t have to be a Reddit user to find and use that information. You can simply search Google, click a link, and read whatever discussion helps you move on with your life. That, however, might be about to change.
On Oct 29, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the company plans to test a requirement that everyone using its site has to sign in to view most of its content. The company will begin testing the change outside the US during the fourth quarter, though it hasn’t said exactly what content will be restricted or when the changes might roll out elsewhere.
It isn’t hard to understand Reddit’s problem. Artificial intelligence (AI) companies scrape its enormous archive of conversations to train their models and generate answers. Google – which long sent massive amounts of traffic to Reddit – introduced AI-powered search features that answer questions directly, meaning fewer people ever visit Reddit. Google just takes the information it finds on the relevant subreddit and gives it to users.
According to the company’s latest earnings report, search traffic has declined by more than one million referrals on average during October. That’s per week. Huffman says that total daily active visitors, currently around 130 million, could decline by a low double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter if the trend continues.
As you might imagine, that’s a big problem for a company that depends on traffic that it can monetise with advertising. It’s also an interesting problem considering that Reddit reported third-quarter revenue of US$895mil (RM3.64bil), an increase of 53%.
In other words, Reddit doesn’t seem to have a problem making money. At least, not for now. The real problem is that AI is clearly threatening its core business.
That’s a real concern. The company has spent decades building a place where users post an incredible amount of useful information. AI companies can collect that information and use it to answer questions. None of that results in traffic to Reddit’s website.
Of course, Reddit already licenses its content to Google and OpenAI. It’s not so much that the company is opposed to AI companies using its data. It just wants to control who gets access and be sure it’s getting paid for it.
On the one hand, that’s a reasonable business strategy. Reddit has to protect its source of revenue, or it doesn’t have a business at all. The problem is that Reddit’s proposed solution will almost certainly make the experience of using Reddit substantially worse for the humans who actually use it.
Consider that – according to the company – nearly 60% of Reddit’s daily visitors aren’t logged in. Those are people who might arrive from a Google search, find something useful, and then leave. Reddit says logged-in users and app users account for more than 80% of its monetisation, which makes that gap a problem. It also explains why it would prefer everyone have an account and be logged in.
But – and this is important – there’s a reason people use the site without logging in. They don’t care about having a relationship with Reddit. They’re just there for an answer.
Making all of those people create an account makes it harder for them to do something that has worked for like two decades. It also makes what is arguably the Internet’s most valuable collection of information less accessible to humans in order to protect it from robots.
There’s also something particularly ironic about AI companies with licensing agreements having easier access to Reddit’s conversations than ordinary people who just want to get an answer to their question.
Reddit certainly has the right to protect its business – though it’s worth mentioning that the entire thing is built on content created for free and published on its forums. The entire business exists only because millions of people voluntarily contribute their knowledge and experiences, often with no expectation of compensation.
Making that information harder to access might improve Reddit’s advertising business. It might even help the company negotiate more lucrative AI licensing deals. But it could also make the Internet less useful for humans because AI has become too good at using it. – Inc./Tribune News Service
