Reddit is considering taking action to protect its data and potentially generate revenue from AI companies that use its content. Reddit initially denied a report by The Washington Post suggesting that they might require users to log in to access their content. However, Reddit later clarified that they were only denying the login requirement and not the other changes discussed in the report.
The key proposed change is that Reddit might block Google and Bing’s search crawlers if they cannot reach agreements with generative AI companies to pay for their data. This would mean that Reddit posts would not show up in search results on these search engines. The Post’s anonymous source mentioned that Reddit believes it can survive without search.
This change could impact how people find and access Reddit content through search engines, as currently, many users rely on search engines to discover Reddit discussions.
Appending “site:reddit.com” to a Google search is a popular way to filter out certain search results, but if Reddit blocks search crawlers, this method may no longer work.
The report also touches on the broader context of how news organizations, including Reddit, have been taking measures to protect their content from being scraped by AI companies, such as OpenAI, to train products like ChatGPT.
These actions may involve implementing new pricing tiers for API access or imposing reading limits to address data scraping issues.
via The Verge
