Reddit has been trying its best to protect its data from big AI companies using the platform data for training their AI software.
Now, Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman calls out Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity for scrapping Reddit’s data without permission. This comes after Reddit secured data-sharing deals with Google and OpenAI.
Here is what Steve said in an interview.
“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.”
He then specifically named Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity for refusing to negotiate. He further said it is “a real pain in the ass to block these companies.”
Reddit has been strengthening its policies against AI bots. Last month, Reddit updated its robots.txt file to block these companies from accessing its content. They blocked the web crawlers it doesn’t have agreements with.
Some time back, people started noticing that Reddit results were only visible in Google search results. For this Google is paying Reddit a heavy yearly fee.
He said that Microsoft has been using Reddit’s data to train its AI and summarize its content in Bing Results without permission. He also said that Reddit data has also been sold through Bing API to other search engines.
“We’ve had Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity act as though all of the content on the internet is free for them to use. That’s their real position.”
He referenced the Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s comment at a conference.
In response, Microsoft’s Head of Search, Jordi Ribas said, “Reddit has blocked Bing from crawling their site for search, favoring another search engine and impacting competition from Bing and Bing-powered engines.”
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