Can Reddit survive in the AI era?

学习目标

• 解释数据越有用、原网站却可能流失访问的矛盾
• 拆解多层定语从句与省略
• 辨别指控、预测、消息来源和已观察数据
• 用不同口径理解访问、使用时长、广告与授权

EARLIER THIS summer “Backrooms”, a horror flick, became one of the most successful independent films ever made, grossing $393m from a $10m budget. Its source material was unusual: a collection of images of unnervingly empty rooms that spread on Reddit, an internet forum. Hollywood producers have since taken to trawling the site for inspiration.

今年夏天早些时候，恐怖片《Backrooms》成为有史以来最成功的独立电影之一，以1000万美元预算取得3.93亿美元票房。 它的素材来源颇不寻常：一组令人不安的空房间图片，在网络论坛Reddit上传播开来。 此后，好莱坞制片人开始到这个网站搜寻灵感。

Reddit has had a difficult time of late. Its share price has dropped by about a third this year. Strong quarterly earnings last month failed to cheer shareholders, who fret that the company will suffer as users turn to artificial-intelligence chatbots for information, rather than search engines such as Google that direct them to other sites. For now Reddit is attempting to cajole chatbot-makers into paying more for its data, both through deals and lawsuits. But eventually it hopes bot-weary users will return to one of the internet’s last refuges of human-generated content.

Reddit最近日子不太好过。 其股价今年已经下跌约三分之一。 上个月公布的强劲季度业绩未能让股东振奋；他们担心，用户转向人工智能聊天机器人获取信息，而不再使用谷歌这类会把用户引向其他网站的搜索引擎，公司将因此受损。 眼下，Reddit正试图通过商业协议和诉讼，促使聊天机器人开发商为其数据支付更多费用。 但最终，它希望厌倦机器人的用户回到这个地方——互联网上少数仍有人类创作内容的避风港之一。

Reddit’s business model lies somewhere between Instagram (which profits off user-generated content) and Wikipedia (which relies on an army of volunteer moderators). That balance has sometimes been tricky to manage. In 2023 the volunteers who moderate its “subreddits” went on a multi-day strike after the company said it would charge for access to its application programming interface, on which independent developers who build Reddit-based apps rely. The platform, which stuck with the policy, may have had larger clients in mind. Soon afterwards it struck deals with Google and OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, which reportedly agreed to pay $60m and $70m a year, respectively, to train their models on Reddit’s data.

Reddit的商业模式介于Instagram与维基百科之间：前者靠用户生成的内容赚钱，后者依赖大批志愿管理者。 这种平衡有时很难维持。 2023年，公司表示将对应用程序编程接口的访问收费后，管理各个“subreddit”版块的志愿者进行了持续数日的罢工；开发基于Reddit的应用的独立开发者依赖这一接口。 平台坚持了这项政策，它心里想的客户或许是更大的企业。 不久之后，它与谷歌以及ChatGPT开发商OpenAI达成协议；据报道，两家公司分别同意每年支付6000万美元和7000万美元，使用Reddit的数据训练模型。

They may have got themselves a bargain. Reddit has become the most-cited source by many of the leading American chatbots, according to an analysis the company commissioned from Profound, a research firm. One particularly valuable use of its data is for generating product recommendations. About 40% of conversations on the site relate to commercial activity including shopping, says Jen Wong, Reddit’s operations chief. On subreddits such as r/BuyItForLife, users debate the quality of products—and try to weed out sponsored or bot-generated content—making the results a rare source of high-quality reviews. AI models rely heavily on such content to generate their own recommendations, which chatbot-makers hope to turn into a source of ad revenue.

它们或许做成了一笔划算的买卖。 据Reddit委托研究公司Profound进行的一项分析，Reddit已成为许多领先的美国聊天机器人最常引用的来源。 其数据一种尤其有价值的用途，是生成商品推荐。 Reddit首席运营官Jen Wong说，网站上约40%的讨论涉及购物等商业活动。 在r/BuyItForLife等版块，用户讨论商品质量，并尝试剔除赞助内容或机器人生成的内容，使讨论结果成为高质量评价的一种难得来源。 AI模型高度依赖这类内容来生成自己的推荐，而聊天机器人开发商希望把这些推荐变成广告收入来源。

Google’s relationship with Reddit in particular has become less of a two-way exchange. For years Google’s ranked search results have been an important source of traffic for the chat site. But as the tech giant shifts users’ focus to its AI overviews, referrals have dropped precipitously. Reddit’s stock took its largest-ever single-day plunge last month after it said that “choppy” search referrals had hurt traffic. Last quarter the amount of time users spent on Reddit’s app each day was down by 8% from a year earlier, compared with gains of 6% and 4% for Instagram and TikTok, respectively, according to Sensor Tower, a data provider.

尤其是谷歌与Reddit之间的关系，已越来越不像双向互惠的交换。 多年来，谷歌按排名呈现的搜索结果，一直是这个讨论网站的重要流量来源。 但随着这家科技巨头把用户注意力转向其AI概览，转介访问量急剧下降。 上个月，Reddit表示“不稳定”的搜索转介影响了流量，之后其股价遭遇了有史以来最大的单日跌幅。 数据提供商Sensor Tower称，上季度，用户每天花在Reddit应用上的时间比一年前下降8%；相比之下，Instagram和TikTok分别增长6%和4%。

One option for Reddit is to bargain for a better deal with AI providers. It has been negotiating new agreements with Google and others. If that does not work, lawsuits may. Reddit has already sued Anthropic, another model-maker, and Perplexity, an AI search engine. Both suits allege that the companies scraped Reddit’s data illegally. (Anthropic and Perplexity have said they did not break the law.) Victory in court—or lucrative settlements—would give the chat site greater leverage in negotiations over licensing its data.

Reddit的一个选择，是与AI提供商谈成条件更好的协议。 它一直在与谷歌等公司协商新协议。 如果这条路行不通，诉讼或许能奏效。 Reddit已起诉另一家模型开发商Anthropic，以及AI搜索引擎Perplexity。 两起诉讼均指控对方非法抓取Reddit的数据。 （Anthropic和Perplexity表示自己并未违法。） 胜诉——或取得丰厚的和解款——会增强这个讨论网站在数据授权谈判中的筹码。

Ultimately, though, Reddit hopes to lessen its reliance on other tech firms. Traffic from search is “not where our business lives”, said Steve Huffman, its boss, in last month’s earnings call. Instead the company hopes to encourage more users to visit its site directly, and spend more time browsing once there. That would further boost its ad revenue, which grew by 64% in the second quarter, year on year. Ms Wong is optimistic that the (mostly) human content on Reddit will appeal to users as they grow tired of interacting with chatbots. Aspiring film-makers need not fear being starved of material just yet.

不过，归根结底，Reddit希望减少对其他科技公司的依赖。 其负责人Steve Huffman在上个月的业绩电话会上说，搜索带来的访问“并不是我们业务的根本所在”。 相反，公司希望促使更多用户直接访问网站，并在进入网站后花更多时间浏览。 如果做到这一点，就会进一步推高其广告收入；第二季度，该项收入同比增长了64%。 Wong女士乐观地认为，随着用户厌倦与聊天机器人互动，Reddit上主要由人类创作的内容将吸引他们。 有志拍电影的人，暂时还不必担心会断了素材来源。

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