Not only has Reddit not signed any new AI deals, it's considering cancelling it's $60 million per year deal with Google, reportedly because of concerns about how Google's AI search results have drastically reduced traffic to websites, which has hurt profits across the internet.

Reddit is extremely valuable to AI companies because the question-answer format of many Reddit posts is perfect for training LLMs, and scraping info for search results, particularly because Reddit is a trusted source for niche questions. In 2025 it was the #1 cited source for Google's AI overviews and #2 for ChatGPT (who Reddit also has a deal with).

It's obnoxious that investors would punish the company with its steepest ever stock-price drop, even when it's revenues were higher then expected. It's yet another signal of the insanity that the AI-boom has injected into the U.S. economy, where AI investments made up 40% of GDP growth last year.

Reddit has shown itself to be litigious when it comes to AI companies using data from Reddit without permission (you will be sued). So it's not like Reddit isn't interested in profiting from data-scraping deals, they're just showing a wee bit of caution.

KEY QUOTES:

>Reddit (RDDT) stock plunged nearly 21% on Friday [July 31], its largest intraday decline since the company went public.

>The user discussion platform company's latest earnings report did not announce any new artificial intelligence data licensing agreements, disappointing investors who were expecting more revenue opportunities from AI partnerships

>Revenue of $804.9 million beat estimates of $731.8 million. However, US daily active users came in at 53.2 million, just shy of expectations of 54 million. The company's total daily active users grew by 18% to 130.3 million versus estimates of 130.07 million.

>Reddit's main revenue comes from its advertising business, but Wall Street has increasingly focused on the potential of Reddit's data licensing deals, given the platform's massive collection of user-generated discussions, which have become valuable for AI companies training models.

AI-writing detectors are a thing, I wonder if this professor knew that. The detectors have their own problems, like falsely flagging people who write like LLMs because they're from a place like Kenya that supplied the human labor that trained the LLMs.

Pangram is one AI-writing detector that's reputable. Here's a great list of AI-writing detectors interestingly sourced from a subreddit dedicated to deceiving those same detectors, r/humanizeAIwriting.

Not surprising that a subreddit like that would exist considering that a majority of U.S. teens say they use AI chatbots to help with schoolwork.

KEY QUOTES:

>In this case, the issue is students using AI to cheat on assignments. The solution, used to great effect by one professor, was to hide a white-colored font in the assignment prompt telling the AI to talk nonsense about an unrelated subject.

>In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students' midterm. It was about the Industrial Revolution, but knowing how many students now rely solely on artificial intelligence for their answers, he secretly embedded instructions telling the AI to include information about Madagascar in a way that makes no sense.

>Sure enough, 32 out of the 35 students across two classes simply copied the question, pasted it into a chatbot, then copy and pasted its output into the answer window.

A TikTok vid the professor made about this incident

Jensen Huang is the CEO of Nvidia, a company that designs advanced computer chips. It's become one of the wealthiest companies in the world as a result of the AI boom.

A couple of choice quotes--

>Huang said some of his fellow AI leaders are scaring the American people by raising concerns about widespread job losses. He said their fears about China's standing in the AI race are similarly spooking policymakers in Washington.

Translation: "Please stop making Americans hate AI and also let me sell chips to China, pleaaase." (the US government has restricted Nvidia from selling their top-model chips to China)

>Huang said there are other narratives in AI that are not helpful, pointing to the debate about whether AI has consciousness, will reach singularity, or that humanity is just in a simulation. "Don't create a story that is made up," he said. "It is made up that there's going to be a singularity. It's made up that somehow we're living in a simulation. These are all made ups. I think it's a fun story. I don't mind listening to it. And I even enjoy the narrative when it's told by many of those leaders who are my friends.

Funny, because achieving some sort of singularity or "AGI" is what ALL THE INSANE FUNDING FOR AI IS BASED ON. It's why OpenAI was created, so that a "good" company would reach the singularity first. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just said that we're in the singularity already... OK.

In all seriousness, it's striking to see one of the biggest players in the tech industry throw cold water on two of the main selling-points of AI: reaching super intelligence and replacing workers. These promises are what the bubble was built on, it's why companies are spending $3 trillion building out AI infrastructure.

It's not news that Facebook and other platforms pay creators small amounts of money for viral content. In this 404 media article, one Indian creator says he was paid about $1,500 in a month where he reached 62 million people. For some perspective, to reach that many people with a TV ad would cost at least $1 million.

It's also not news that platforms are paying creators to make sensational content without regard for morality or factuality (engagement over everything). BUT you can only make a living from these creator payout programs if you are the top .001% creator or if you live in a country like India, Vietnam, or Russia where the national currency is worth much less than the dollar.

These Aussie white nationalists getting paid by Meta are a small part of a larger problem. Creator payment programs pay the most for English-language content targeted at Americans, because advertisers pay the most to reach American audiences. That means creators across the world have been incentivized to make politically charged content, "rage bait," and slop for Americans and other English speakers. Read more in this article titled, "America's Political Polarization Has Become the World's Side Hustle."

KEY QUOTES:

>A white nationalist with neo-Nazi links who hurled racist abuse at the Indian prime minister during his visit last month is being paid by Facebook's parent company, Meta, to produce content. An ABC NEWS Verify investigation into several controversial Australian pages on Facebook has found that some are benefiting directly from social media monetisation programs run by Meta.

>Facebook distributed nearly $US3 billion ($4.27 billion) to an estimated 16.2 million monetised accounts in 2025.

>What To Fix executive director Victoire Rio said it meant that, in effect, Facebook was in a business relationship with these people and organisations. "If we consider that Meta is in a direct commercial relationship with its publishers, insofar that they're paying them royalties and that they have a monetisation agreement with them, then you could argue that they are liable for the content that gets produced by their business partner in some ways."

>The pages examined by ABC NEWS Verify all appeared at times to be in direct violation of Facebook's own policies around content monetisation. They state that "debated social issues" such as race "may face reduced or restricted monetisation", while "misleading medical information" is "ineligible to monetise".

>Independent right-wing extremism researcher Kaz Ross said paying controversial creators was a deliberate strategy from Meta. "Their financial model is to reward content creators who get engagement, and as we know, the best way of getting engagement is to produce rage bait, extremist material, aggravating material: anything that will get people upset and arguing is the best way to get engagement," Dr Ross said.

Psychologist Candice Odgers says social media is being used as a scapegoat when things like caregiver mental health and access to resources remain much stronger predictors of a child's well-being.

“The identification of social media as the culprit, as the biggest predictor of all the things that we worry about in our kids, is misleading, because it doesn’t show up that way in the vast majority of studies, and it sucks all the air out of the room in terms of thinking about solutions.”

It's a sentiment that a lot of people don't want to hear as countries around the world enact social media bans for kids, but the points made in this video are undeniable and important (peak Taylor Lorenz content).

KEY POINTS:

>Data shows that caregiver mental health is the biggest signal for youth mental health. Phones have become the scapegoat when research has long shown that most harm comes from the offline world, often from within the home.

>In her research, young people who were already struggling turned to social media, far more often than social media being the source of their struggles. Kids turn to phones to cope (just like adults), and social media can be a healthy or unhealthy coping tool.

>The guest doesn’t like using the term "addiction," and says that social media “can be helpful or harmful" depending on how you use it.

>Data shows that kids aren't doom scrolling nearly as much as they're direct messaging and hanging out in chat groups (think Discord).

>The correlation between well being and scrolling is "less than one percent." Studies which had adults give up social media didn’t see an improvement in well being.

>The story we’re telling feels true but is not backed by data. We're teaching kids to feel shame when they use social media and giving them conflicting messages, like, "don’t share your personal information online," but also, "share your ID and scan your face for this age verification."

So David Ellison recently wrote this op-ed to push the narrative that the 12 states suing him on anti-trust grounds are only doing so for political reasons--to stop him from owning CNN--rather than their stated reasons: that industry consolidation will lead to higher prices, worse products, and lower worker pay.

In the op-ed, Ellison says CNN will remain independent, but also that "the news should be based on facts and truth," and that CNN is here to "tell it straight down the middle... reflect the whole world, not one side of it." This language is intentional, it's a signal to his MAGA allies that he will make CNN more conservative, under the thin intellectual cover of 'restoring balance' to their news coverage.

It seems like he's trying to signal to Trump that he'll do his bidding and neuter CNN, while assuaging worried investors that he won't ruin CNN as a product by forcing conservative viewpoints on it like he did with CBS. With a $111 billion merger on the line, Ellison needs to shore up his allies, but he can't have it both ways...

After the Ellison's purchase of Paramount, he installed conservative journalist Bari Weiss to lead CBS news, and allegedly had a hand in cancelling liberal-comedian Stephen Colbert's show. Him and his dad Larry Ellison have close ties with Trump, whose government allegedly fast-tracked their mergers in quid pro quo deals.

KEY QUOTES:

>Paramount CEO David Ellison said he believes the antitrust litigation filed by 12 states and the Writers Guild of America isn’t about market share but about “whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN.”

>Ellison, in an op-ed published by the New York Times Tuesday, noted, “There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions.” He reiterated his pledge that CNN would remain independent under a merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery and that its journalists “will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause... when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth,” Ellison wrote." The Paramount chief continued, “Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle. That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause. These were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News, for legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow, and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of ‘60 Minutes.’”

>Not mentioned by Ellison in the piece: Bari Weiss, the founder of the Free Press, whom he put in charge of CBS News as editor in chief — and has become a lightning rod for critics accusing her of promoting a rightward tilt in news coverage.

>Separately, last month a Paramount shareholder sued David Ellison and his tech billionaire father Larry Ellison, alleging they cut an “illegal” deal with President Donald Trump to secure U.S. governmental approval for the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. In return, according to the lawsuit, the Ellisons offered “the opportunity to improperly funnel cash” to the president by settling his legal claims against CNN, and they allegedly promised that CNN anchors whom Trump does not like would be fired after the WBD takeover.