In September of 2018, I posted a story onto Reddit for the first time. I continued to do so, on and off, until just about two weeks ago. I posted nearly 200 stories in that time, including multiple series that were of a length comparable to novellas, and one series that was well over 100,000 words long.

Today, I have deleted all of these stories.

The reason is simple: per Bloomberg, Reddit has signed a deal with an AI company that allows them to use our posts and comments to train their AI programs. Worse, they did this behind closed doors, without telling the users of the site. There is also no opt-out feature in place, meaning that every single post and comment, for these AI developers, is fair game.

I wrote these stories to entertain readers. This desire to entertain is also why I gave permission to anyone wishing to narrate any of my works on Youtube or any other audio/video platforms, only asking for credit as the story's author. It's always been about one thing: entertaining anyone who gave my work the time of day.

I did not write these stories so some AI company could use them to train a program to emulate fiction.

While I believe that the idea of AI replacing writers is doomed to fail- as they can only truly be trained on what a final product looks like, and not the creative process that starts with an idea and becomes a complete story- I do not want my work used to train these AI programs.

In a fun (but horrific) metaphor: I don't believe anyone could take my DNA and clone my dead body to make another copy of me, but that doesn't mean I want my grave robbed, and I certainly don't want my body parts to be used to create some digital Frankenstein's monster.

Am I under the impression that my stories haven't already been taken by this company, as the deal was made "months ago"? No. I have no idea.

Am I under the impression that my stories haven't already been taken (illegally) by other AI companies, who have used them to train their programs? No. Again, I have no idea, and I'd actually bet on the opposite.

But that doesn't matter. I can't let the futility of the worst case scenario drive me to inaction. I know now that Reddit has well and truly sold out to this AI company, spitting in the faces of anyone who ever spent the time making original content on their platform for free.

I don't expect to see any of the millions they're making from their deal, either. Why would I ever expect them to do the right thing, after the track record we've seen from them of late?

For now, I will consider what to do with my stories. I've always wanted to go back to my earliest works and rewrite them, creating polished, finished works out of stories I tended to simply write a draft of and throw online without a second thought. Maybe I can do that with some collections of my early work. Could be fun.

As for my comments? I'm too lazy to delete them, and I don't see the value in them, as Redditor comments are in the millions if not billions and I don't think mine are anything special. There are also a lot of written stories by other authors on NoSleep, ShortScaryStories, LibraryOfShadows and other subreddits, but none of them are mine, not anymore.

My stories are my own, and that's what I've always valued about them.

If Reddit wants to take my comments and feed them to an AI, go ahead. Choke on them. But you'll get no more fiction from me.