By In a turn for the worse Reddit, once a haven for the free exchange of thoughts and ideas, is now actively profiting from users contributions in a form outside of normal social media practice.
Many of us have heard and come to terms with the saying “If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product”. In the social media and search engine world that means we essentially have given up our right to privacy to the websites we use so they can help advertisers use our information to target us with ads. In Google this essentially works by matching the keywords you type into the search engine to high quality ads you might click on, In Facebook it works by showing you ads targeted to things you like or websites you’ve visited in the past, and on Reddit until last week it meant seeing a confusing ad on the home page or one targeted to the sub area you’re in.
Last week Reddit changed the rules and took their rights to user submitted content to a previously unthinkable level. They published a book of AMA’s that included users submitted questions and the conversations had between users and celebrities doing the AMA’s. The move was met with a high volume of concern and jest and with good reason. Essentially, for the first time in history, a social media network has not only claimed the rights to user submitted content in mass they are now profiting off it without the direct consent of users for each usage and doing so off of their own website.
The implications are vast for thousands of users on the social networking site. Not just for commenters, but for those that post their own original, unique content to the site in sub-reddits like the following:
- /r/Poetry – 47,796 users, ~66,000 unique posts
- /r/OCPoetry – 8,404 users, ~26,000 unique posts
- /r/WritingPrompts – 4,548,667 users, ~307,000 unique posts
- /r/AskReddit – 10,147,215 users, ~13,000,000 unique posts
- /r/LifeProTips – 5,612,574 users, ~197,000 unique posts
- /r/Travel – 225,557 users, ~242,000 unique posts
As you can see in the above data millions of users have posted millions of unique submissions and comments in just these 5 sub-reddits that encourage original text based content. I reached out to the mods of the above sub-reddits to gauge how they felt about Reddit’s new profit model. The mods of /r/Poetry were against Reddit republishing the original content submitted on their sub, but admitted that they could do little to stop corporate. The mods of /r/WritingPrompts said they would work with Reddit to publish a book only if the original authors were fairly compensated and agreed to the publication. The mods of /r/Travel which encourages unique travel tips seemed to misunderstand the User Agreement (UA) and felt that Redditors could simply tell Reddit no to publishing their content (they can’t), and when they realized this simply stated that users are the product of Reddit but expressed hope that Reddit would rightfully credit the authors. Finally the mods of /r/AskReddit said they had no book plans currently and offered no more comments.
(conversations above can be found in this imgur link with specific reddit mod names redacted for privacy: http://imgur.com/a/wGyzl)
And what if other social networks followed suit? Imagine if YouTube claimed ownership of all videos you uploaded and sold them to TV producers, if IMGUR sold a photo album of your memes, or if Instagram printed books of your selfies, if DeviantArt took ownership and printed copies of your artwork, if Twitter took ownership of your photos and vines and sold them on a disc – you would be rightfully outraged that your rights to your content had been violated and you would have no recourse since using the site you gave the website owners the rights to your works. A grand heist of creativity could be just now starting. You could walk into a Hobby Lobby or Target soon and see your creative works sold on display without ever seeing a dime.
How Reddit Can Take Your Copyrights Legally
Reddit changed their User Agreement on December 11th, 2013 which included paragraphs 17 & 18. These paragraphs read much like those on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.. and has been argued by social media networks as necessary to sell ads on their website against the content you post. Reddit never made a blog post about the change as seen in their blog’s December 2013 archives, they did, however, claim to be making changes to their self-service advertising system a few months earlier but those changes never materialized and the system is still built in a way that is difficult and ineffective for advertisers to use.
17 – You retain the rights to your copyrighted content or information that you submit to reddit (“User Content”) except as described below.
18 – By submitting User Content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your User Content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.
To their credit Reddit has promoted user content in the past to help it get visibility off of the site and co-founder Alexas Ohanian stated that in the long-term users will profit from their works. My response is included in the following Twitter conversation, but I’ll repeat it here. That’s a nice platitude, but offers nothing concrete to users. Reddit can and has now proven that they WILL take your content without your consent and assert their rights to ownership over it in order for them to increase profits. Post your creative work to Reddit at your own risk and be warned that the frontpage of the internet might just take ownership rights if and when it suits them.
Suggestions for Changes
I have no problems with Reddit wanting to make a profit, after all I’m in business for the same reasons. Here’s how they could accomplish their goals while protecting users rights to content.
- User Integration – There could be a section of your user profile that, when logged in, notifies you of comments and submitted content being considered for a Reddit production project. A quick yes or no click could grant them the rights to use it without you seeing a penny.
- Reddit Store – Reddit doesn’t host images or videos, probably in hind site a bad idea for their commercial future, but what if they allowed you via their partners to sell your poetry, travel tips, etc.. They could combine the ideas into collections and easily distribute royalties to you.
- Improve the advertising system – Reddit ads just simply suck for the users and the advertisers. As a frequent user of Reddit and a digital advertiser I’d love to see changes that keep the ads from being super intrusive but provide value to the advertiser. Imgur is killing it with their sponsored stories which has been a big focus for Ebay this year. The idea’s Reddit posted in their 2013 blog post were all amazing and could help companies of any size reach the audience on Reddit. They also need to allow targeting based on a city and sub-reddit and create an auction like system for the ads instead of selling out inventory months in advance.