Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has announced the end of the free data scraping era on the social network site. Huffman has made money with Google and OpenAI, and now he is urging Microsoft and other companies to pay up as well if they want to use Reddit’s data going forward.
The CEO of Reddit stressed the importance of these agreements in preserving control over Reddit’s data and ensuring its responsible use. Reddit would reportedly lose control and run the risk of misuse without them since it would have no say over how its data is used or presented.
“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,” said Steve Huffman in an interview with The Verge.
Some of the companies that have refused to negotiate are Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity; Huffman called it “a real pain” to block them. To combat unapproved web crawlers, Reddit modified its robots.txt file in July this year to prohibit those that do not have permission.
Reports further state that Reddit results are now the only ones displayed in Google search results because of their paid arrangement, which is one of the obvious implications of this decision. In the meantime, Reddit users have accused Microsoft’s Bing search engine of illicitly accessing their data, training its artificial intelligence, and summarising articles without permission.
Moreover, Steve Huffman questioned Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman for saying that public internet data is “freeware,” implying a contempt for compensating data sources. Reddit’s position is unequivocal: firms who profit from its data must pay fair compensation, reports add.
This development shows the widening divide between data suppliers and digital behemoths over data use and monetisation. Reddit hopes to ensure that its users have a say in how their data is used and shown by establishing stronger controls. This initiative is part of a larger trend in which web companies attempt to better monetise their data, acknowledging its rising value in the AI and machine learning era.
It is unclear how Reddit and Microsoft will resolve this impasse, but it may have a big impact on data sharing and revenue in the future. Meanwhile, the tech community observes Huffman’s unwavering stance and speculates about who would blink first.
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