Reddit Founder Says Building Social Media Apps Is ‘Not Cool Anymore’

Alexis Ohanian wants to figure out the future of user-generated content. According to the Reddit cofounder, building social media apps is “not cool anymore” and so much of the internet has been compromised.

Reddit 联合创始人 Alexis Ohanian 希望探索用户生成内容的未来。他认为，开发社交媒体应用“已经不再酷了”，而且互联网的很大一部分已经受到了损害。

“I’m expecting some better version of the group chat to be that new version of UGC,” Ohanian told WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode at the inaugural WIRED World Fair.

“我期待群聊的某种升级版本能成为用户生成内容（UGC）的新形式，”Ohanian 在首届 WIRED 世界博览会上对 WIRED 高级记者 Lauren Goode 说道。

Ohanian has a complicated relationship with the internet. He resigned from Reddit in 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, to make room for a Black board member and to pressure the company to reform its content moderation policies. The social site had been notorious for hosting violent and harmful rhetoric. Ohanian reflects on recently learning someone with a Reddit tattoo—once a sign of the site’s success to Ohanian—had since covered it up: “I don’t blame him.”

Ohanian 与互联网的关系十分复杂。在乔治·弗洛伊德（George Floyd）遇害后，他于 2020 年辞去了 Reddit 的职务，旨在为黑人董事会成员腾出位置，并向公司施压以改革其内容审核政策。该社交网站曾因充斥暴力和有害言论而臭名昭著。Ohanian 回忆起最近得知有人将身上的 Reddit 纹身（这曾被他视为该网站成功的标志）遮盖掉时表示：“我不怪他。”

He now runs venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, which has over $1.3 billion in assets under management. He focuses on sports, where he finds real-life communities “in the age of AI slop” and a “manipulated” internet.

他目前经营着风险投资公司 Seven Seven Six，管理资产超过 13 亿美元。他专注于体育领域，因为在“人工智能垃圾内容泛滥”和互联网被“操纵”的时代，他在这里找到了现实生活中的社区。

Ohanian is a proponent of the “Dead Internet Theory”—the idea that a lot of online activity and content is being generated by bots. Large language models have turbocharged this, with AI agents outrunning human users. “The internet that I grew up on … that was really built for humans first; user interfaces and experiences are going to go away,” said Ohanian, “because more of the internet is going to get created for these agents to use, [rather] than for people.”

Ohanian 是“死互联网理论”（Dead Internet Theory）的支持者，该理论认为许多在线活动和内容都是由机器人生成的。大型语言模型加速了这一进程，AI 代理的活跃度已超过了人类用户。“我成长过程中所接触的互联网……那是真正为人类优先构建的；用户界面和体验将会消失，”Ohanian 说，“因为未来互联网的很大一部分将是为了供这些代理使用而创建的，而不是为了人类。”

In some ways, the advance in generative AI has been lucrative for sites like Reddit, which has licensed its vast archive of human conversations to companies including Google and OpenAI to train AI models. “Platforms like ours became very, very valuable to LLMs,” Ohanian said.

在某些方面，生成式人工智能的进步为 Reddit 等网站带来了丰厚利润，这些网站将其庞大的人类对话存档授权给 Google 和 OpenAI 等公司用于训练 AI 模型。Ohanian 表示：“像我们这样的平台对大语言模型（LLM）变得非常有价值。”

But the technology has also undermined the business. Reddit shares plunged 29 percent last week after the platform warned that Google’s AI-powered search was hurting referral traffic. Ohanian also worries the commercialisation of these conversations means they are full of “bullshit.” “The internet has gotten so manipulated because it is so incredibly valuable to do so,” he said.

但这项技术也损害了其业务。上周，在 Reddit 警告 Google 的 AI 搜索正在削弱其引荐流量后，公司股价暴跌了 29%。Ohanian 还担心，这些对话的商业化意味着它们充斥着“废话”。他说：“互联网变得如此容易被操纵，是因为这样做具有极高的价值。”

Reddit recently said it would require users to sign in to fight third-party scraping and keep up user engagement. While Ohanian declined to say whether he agrees with the move, “there has to be provable humanity on the internet without being creepy.”

Reddit 最近表示，将要求用户登录以打击第三方抓取行为并保持用户参与度。虽然 Ohanian 拒绝透露他是否同意这一举措，但他表示：“互联网上必须存在可证明的人性，且不能让人感到毛骨悚然。”

An early Anthropic investor, Ohanian is nonetheless optimistic about the potential benefits of AI. He is especially excited to see medical breakthroughs from the technology. “There is still a very real chance that this technology can cause a lot of harm for sure,” he said. “I think we have to be sober about how we’re building and what we’re doing, but I still can’t help but see all of the things that can get so demonstrably better.”

作为 Anthropic 的早期投资者，Ohanian 对人工智能的潜在益处依然持乐观态度。他特别期待看到该技术在医学领域取得突破。“这项技术确实很有可能造成巨大的伤害，”他说，“我认为我们必须清醒地认识到我们正在构建什么以及正在做什么，但我仍然忍不住看到所有那些可以变得明显更好的事物。”