Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is standing by Reddit’s decision to block companies from scraping the site without an AI agreement.
Last week, 404 Media noticed that search engines that weren’t Google were no longer listing recent Reddit posts in results. This was because Reddit updated its Robots Exclusion Protocol (txt file) to block bots from scraping the site. The file reads: “Reddit believes in an open Internet, but not the misuse of public content.” Since the news broke, OpenAI announced SearchGPT, which can show recent Reddit results.
The change came a year after Reddit began its efforts to stop free scraping, which Huffman initially framed as an attempt to stop AI companies from making money off of Reddit content for free. This endeavor also led Reddit to begin charging for API access (the high pricing led to many third-party Reddit apps closing).
In an interview with The Verge today, Huffman stood by the changes that led to Google temporarily being the only search engine able to show recent discussions from Reddit. Reddit and Google signed an AI training deal in February said to be worth $60 million a year. It’s unclear how much Reddit’s OpenAI deal is worth.
Huffman said:
Without these agreements, we don’t have any say or knowledge of how our data is displayed and what it’s used for, which has put us in a position now of blocking folks who haven’t been willing to come to terms with how we’d like our data to be used or not used.
“[It’s been] a real pain in the ass to block these companies,” Huffman told The Verge.
I never bothered to go edit or delete my comments after the API drama that caused me to move here, but now I might just go do that because the entire point of keeping old comments up was that maybe someone will find one from a search engine and find it useful. If reddit is going to monetize THAT, they can fuck right off.
Save your effort. What’s already there is there forever. They can just roll back your comments, or even, if they’re in the mood for it, make it appear under an entirely different username.
The only way to win is not give them any more. And that fight is already under way. They’ve already started recommending old comments after new ones because the quality isn’t as high any more.
Think about it: The only people who contribute to Reddit now are the clueless and the sort of people who have willingly stayed.
I like to imagine Spez stomping around saying “Hmph! Hmph! It’s not fair! Why did they all leave?! They’re stealing my revenue by not giving me anything for free!”. I mean, he’s probably not doing that, but I do like to imagine it.