If it’s true that a fair portion of those who search Google specify “reddit.com” at least sometimes, as seems likely, I’m comfortable that users looking for “elucidation and discovery” are at least somewhat relevant to Reddit or those who wish to compete with Reddit.
I’m not saying this needs to be a clone of Reddit; I don’t think I implied that, or intended to at least.
To be clear, that’s not how I use the platform (I’m not sure I’ve ever searched that way). But it’s a common enough pattern that there have been widely read articles referencing it:
> This means you’ll no longer have to add “Reddit” to your searches when you’re looking for thoughts from actual humans, not empty answers from websites just trying to get clicks.
Given the popularity of searching for things like product reviews or good restaurants in a new town by appending “Reddit.com” to the search query, I think elucidation and discovery are at least part of what drives people to such platforms.
It's not always necessary to compensate those whose labor helped you. I haven't compensated many of the open source projects I use, for example, even those who clearly want me to (with nagging pop-ups). If the use of copyrightable material to train a model is legal, and it does not legally require compensation, it might be difficult to argue that the use of such material should be compensated or else. It would depend IMO on whether there are norms in place for this kind of thing, and I don't necessarily see wide agreement.
> Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas and therefore are pushing politics.
Please provide some evidence that they fund specifically "extreme left wing" political agendas. By which you mean, what, soviet-style communism? Gulags for cops? Violent revolution?
> From what I can gather, it's the promotion of leftist talking points that relegates objectivism & personal liberty in favor of any form of rebalancing, be it racial, political, economical, social, gender-based, or sexual.
This does not read like a good-faith interpretation to me. Small-o objectivism and personal liberty are not at all incompatible with a "woke" perspective on race; I daresay relativism -- particularly moral relativism -- is a minority opinion even among leftists. Nor is it necessarily the case that being woke means you're in favor of enforced rebalancing on the basis of race, ethnicity, etc. Wokeness, in my experience, is far more concerned with issues of justice than with rebalancing (which I take to mean something akin to affirmative action or reparations).
Art is not entirely, 100% subjective, or else there would be nothing to say about it, nothing to discuss. Authorial intent is not the last word but it can be interesting, and it can impact the interpretation we come away with.