The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is probing Reddit’s plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) firms utilize user-generated content to train their software, according to the social media company’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing Friday.

The inquiry comes just days before Reddit is slated to complete its initial public offering, after filing for it last month.

Reddit said it received the letter from the FTC Thursday, according to the SEC filing, but clarified the company was not “surprised” by the inquiry.

Reddit said the FTC is conducting “a non-public inquiry focused on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models. Given the novel nature of these technologies and commercial arrangements, we are not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest in this area.

  • Kumatomic
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    Reddit: “We don’t suck enough, but how can we make our site and business practices more despicable?. Spez: “I’ve got it”

    • EdibleFriend
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      And last year Spez made 193 million for these decisions because thats just how humanity works.

      • mods_are_assholes
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        capitalism rewards the grifter and destroyer when not tightly controlled by regulation.

        Our current grifter economy was seeded in Reagan’s radical deregulation. And we haven’t even hit the worst of it yet.

      • Breezy
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        I thought he said the company wasnt profitable, how does he get almost 200 million dollars then?

        • Sir_KevinEnglish
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          Had to dump all that money somewhere to make sure the company wasn’t profitable

        • metallic_z3r0
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          It’s $193M in stock, which can only be cashed out once Reddit IPOs, thus the drive to do so. Aside from that he gets a “mere” $600k/yr. He can probably borrow against that to a certain point, but I’m not sure a bank would value assets that can’t be liquidated.

      • Kumatomic
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        Lots of people get things they don’t deserve.

    • bloopernovaEnglish
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      Reddit: over enthusiastic, damp-sounding applause

  • FrowingFostek
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    Lina Khan is doing pretty good work in my opinion. It would be a shame to lose that kind of talent under a republican administration.

    • mods_are_assholes
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      If Dolt 45 makes it into office we have a whole fucktonne more to worry about than social media scraping.

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    User: Hey <Generic AI>, two trains leave Cincinnati, one travelling at 50mph and one at 45mph, how long until they’re 400km apart?

    <Generic AI>: The narwhal bacons at midnight into a coconut. Did I answer your question?

    • gentooer
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      It’s 2 days, 1 hour, 42 minutes and 34.9 seconds in case you’re wondering

      • bobs_monkey
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        Ah, but what about the first on a bearing of 270°, and second on a bearing of 190°, assuming the use of established rail routes?

    • NOT_RICKEnglish
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      can you imagine an LLM trained on the_donald? Shit will be worthless

  • TornadoRex
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    Spez is in so far over his head at this point it feels like

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    It was being used before they had the agreement anyways so it’s a little too late to stop it lol

  • SendMePhotos
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    I wonder if some users were working with the FTC and sent things up the chain because fuck spez