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Blocking AI bots from Microsoft, others has been “pain in the a**”: Reddit CEO | Huffman says companies must pay to scrape Reddit data even though Reddit itself relies on free, user-generated content

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.

catloaf ,

And yet reddit is happy to make money off our content for free.

Or at least it did. Personally I overwrote and deleted all my content a while back.

iAmTheTot ,

You think that Reddit didn’t already have the previous content saved?

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Bingo, the only winning move is not to play at all and stop using Reddit.

Animoscity ,
@Animoscity@lemmy.world avatar

Yep that’s how it works. Older content past a certain date is cached which is why you can’t comment or post on some old posts.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Everyone always says this like it’s some kind of gotcha, but all of my nuked posts still have my “fuck you, reddit” content and haven’t been reverted. It’s been nearly exactly a year.

Maybe reddit has an offline copy of my old content and that of others somewhere, but if so they’d be handing that directly over to whoever under some kind of agreement – that certainly wouldn’t be the subject of any kind of site crawling which is the crux of the issue here.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

You’re ignoring the idea that they could still be working on a way to restore content and haven’t completed that process yet

Or that they could start feeding your archived (not cached) data directly to the AI companies anyway for a price

IMO, you can win by jamming your “transmissions” with noise. It’s easier to hide in noise as noise than it Is to be silent IMO. Muddy the waters as it were

finley ,

You’re ignoring the idea that they could still be working on a way to restore content and haven’t completed that process yet

there’s no evidence to suggest this, though.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Content is absolutely archived and they have financial incentive to restore the quality of their “knowledge base”

That’s a fair amount of circumstance and motivation to support my idea, regardless of tangible evidence

finley ,

Motivation and circumstance, absent actual evidence, does not make for a convincing argument.

iAmTheTot ,

I certainly wasn’t implying that they were going to revert your comments.

finley ,

i went looking for old comments and posts i had made after i overwrote then wiped them. They’re still gone. i looked again several months later, and they were still gone.

so, unless reddit did a massive restore of everyone’s comments/posts except for my 4 accounts, then i don’t believe they did it at all except for a select number of top contributors who deleted their content.

iAmTheTot ,

As I said in another comment, I was not suggesting that Reddit would restore your comments to public view.

finley ,

there’s no evidence to suggest that, either.

SpaceNoodle ,

Except for incidents like This

BorgDrone ,

You are assuming edits overwrite existing content. Instead of overwriting, they could just store the edited post as a new entry in the database with a higher version number. Then, you only show the latest version of each post to the end users while keeping the older versions available die Reddit’s own use.

In fact, it is extremely likely they do this. It is basically a necessity if you want to be able to properly moderate a site like Reddit. Otherwise you could simply post spam or unsavory content, and then overwrite it with something benign an hour or so later, before there were enough reports and a moderator would have gotten a chance to review it.

finley ,

You are assuming edits overwrite existing content

i have seen no evidence to suggest otherwise, but thanks for sharing your theories

In fact, it is extremely likely they do this

based on what evidence? your baseless speculation?

BorgDrone ,

The fact that they managed to restore overwritten posts after people started to delete their history.

finley ,

this could also be explained by sketchy scripts failing to completely delete posts/comments, which i even noticed myself when checking that they had done their jobs properly. as i mentioned in another comment, i had to run the shredder scripts several times for complete overwrite/deletion. or it could be database errors failing to register edits/deletions due to extremely heavy loads at the time. it could be a lot of things.

the point is that we don’t have any direct evidence of what it actually was, just a lot of circumstantial evidence and a lot of speculation. nothing definitive.

BorgDrone ,

Reddit used to be open source. There is still a copy of that source available on github. It’s 7 years old so it’s probably significantly different from what they are running now. Still, it gives some insight into the design.

For example, deleted comments aren’t deleted, it just sets a deleted flag. Example code that shows this.

I haven’t dug around the code enough to figure out how editing works, it’s Python code so an unreadable mess. The database design also seems very strange. It’s like they built a database system on top of a database.

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

It seemed to happen to some people but I wouldn’t be surprised it it was just some sort of coincidental database fuck-up

finley ,

i suspect that was more likely incomplete deletions than reddit restoring content. those scripts were pretty janky. i had to run mine several times to get everything, as it didn’t work fully the first couple of times. same with the overwrites. took a few times for those to get everything, especially on older accounts with lots of posts and comments.

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’d read some claims that posts appeared to be deleted but then later came back. Could’ve even been some sort of caching shenanigans with their local browser though I guess.

finley ,

oh, right. i suppose that’s possible. i’ve seen similar browser cache fuckery on other sites before.

finley ,

as i said in a previous comment:

so, unless reddit did a massive restore of everyone’s comments/posts except for my 4 accounts, then i don’t believe they did it at all except for a select number of top contributors who deleted their content.

but there’s no evidence they’re keeping everyone’s deleted-but-restored comments from public view or whatever it is you’re suggesting. or even anything past whaat this one person found. in fact, there isn’t even any evidence that what happened to this user was intentional and not a bug or some other fluke.

sure, reddit would have a vested interest in doing this, and what you’ve presented is suspicious, but it’s hardly conclusive of anything. all it does is raise more questions. but it doesn’t provide answers.

dmtalon ,

They aren’t making money off my content anymore/in the future

AlexanderESmith ,

All you did was screw over people looking for potentially useful content while searching online. Reddit still has all your content.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, but if they’re not displaying it what good is it doing them or their advertisers?

AlexanderESmith ,

They're not selling the ability to scrape their publicly viewable site, they're selling API access to their database. Deleted posts aren't removed from that database.

werefreeatlast ,

How about starting a company that gathers people’s CAD design…grabCAD!.. Oh can’t scrape out design work Microsoft, you gotta pay!..or how about a company that stores people’s records or drawings or movies… Adobe! Oh Microsoft, you can’t scrape our data! It’s our data!

ayyy ,

Fuck Spez. He’s probably editing the comments anyway, he literally can’t help himself.

Vespair ,

I’m sure plenty of others join me in the sentiment of thinking “Who the fuck are you to restrict MY free content that I contributed?”

God, fuck reddit so fucking hard

Brkdncr ,

What if I had an agreement with MS that they can scrape my data and anything I post online?

Shdwdrgn ,

What if Microsoft updated their Windows EULA to state that all users agree to allow MS to scrape their online data (if they haven’t already), and then take that to court against reddit? It would certainly be an interesting court case to watch, especially if they could get actual users to stand up in court and confirm that they did indeed approve of this. And it might settle the issue once and for all regarding companies trying to block freely-visible internet content just because someone scraped the info.

TheRealCharlesEames , (edited )

Damn I feel sorry for the guy now /s

SteveFromMySpace ,

Why? He’s a piece of shit who made a bad deal and is now upset about it.

TheRealCharlesEames ,

lol thought the sarcasm was obvious because who the fuck cares about Spez and his self inflicted ass pain

AlexanderESmith ,

ITT people who don't know what sarcasm is without a literal "/s"

SteveFromMySpace ,

We all learned a long time ago to assume someone is serious until they indicate otherwise. If the joke is indistinguishable from a serious reaction then it’s a bad joke due to ambiguity.

AlexanderESmith ,

I guess you're not wrong, but that does mean that deadpan delivery is dead.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Deadpan delivery on a strictly text medium has always been a difficult needle to thread. It only works in literature because the writer can describe how it was stated, which would look odd in forums/texts/emails/etc. he added sincerely

AlexanderESmith ,

You're not wrong there either, but I do recall a time in which (at least in threads/forums/chat) it worked fairly well.

The issue is that the main way to detect it is to look for an opinion that was wildly diverged from the consensus, but... yeah, I guess people just broadcast those seriously now.

Fuck.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Yeah sadly right wing fuckwits thrive on ambiguity and ruined it for the rest of us. Comedy is a powerful shield.

bappity ,
@bappity@lemmy.world avatar

profiting off of user generated content 😒

ChadCMulligan ,

Reddit is dying anyway.

iAmTheTot ,

It’s easy to say this as someone who is “on the other side”. But the data doesn’t really back up that statement.

catloaf , (edited )

I don’t have data, but the quality of the content certainly seemed to be declining, even as the quantity went up.

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

I think autocorrect might’ve gotten you: You posted “quality” twice in a contradictory way.

catloaf ,

Fixed.

li10 ,

It’s awful. Politics is unavoidable at this point, and the amount of general anger on the platform is crazy.

People love watching their videos of people getting TBIs… Or getting too excited about a “justice served” post where a woman gets hit.

It’s kinda nice to see someone get their comeuppance, but then you look in the comments and there are just weirdos saying stuff like “glad that bitch got hit”, like… wtf?

MichaelTen ,
@MichaelTen@lemmy.world avatar

Minimum royalty laws should exist!

Sordid ,
@Sordid@lemmy.world avatar

The enshittification cycle:

Phase one, attract users by providing a good service.
Phase two, once the users are locked in, squeeze them for all they’re worth by selling them to business customers (advertisers and/or data buyers).
Phase three, once the business customers are locked in, squeeze them for all they’re worth by threatening to deny them access to the users on whom they now depend.

Spez seems to think Reddit has the pull to make phase 3 happen. I rather doubt it, but we’ll see.

Boozilla ,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

My guess is that phase three will work for a while. But I think you’re right that eventually they are going to drive that thing into the ground. Because it’s never enough pure profit for rent-seeking scum, and there is no lower limit to the abuse they’ll inflict on their content creators (who they call users but think of as products).

taaz , (edited )

…substack.com/…/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-st…

Blog post (?) from Catherynne Valente about this exact topic

Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control.

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, as soon as the API thing happened I switched to Lemmy for mobile browsing and like it more than Reddit (Connect is pretty good, but even the mobile browser site is solid).

The more they squeeze, the more popular alternatives like Lemmy, Kbin/Mbin, Tildes, etc. will become.

ruk_n_rul ,

Spez is tracing Elon’s steps with X really closely.

Also fuck spez.

MedicPigBabySaver ,

Fuck Spez

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

Gross.

No thanks.

boonhet ,

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.

palordrolap ,

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.

downpunxx ,

If you're still donating your content to the Facebook, Twitter and Reddit data stores, then I don't know what to tell you man, you're literally enriching the worst people, who will do the worst things, with your information, your stories, your answers, your comments, your labor, your effort. You are giving yourselves to them. Literally.

AlexanderESmith ,

Whenever this comes up, I immediately think of how easy it would be to scrape the threadiverse.

FierySpectre ,

They’re already doing that, if only just for search.

Googling my username used to not give any results up until a few months ago… Since I’m on Lemmy you find my comments by throwing my username into a search engine

SteveFromMySpace ,

Fuck Reddit.

This deal is ridiculous and a terrible precedent for the Internet moving forward. Imagine having to juggle multiple search engines in order to actually search the Internet for things you were looking for because the results literally can’t show up.

What happens when certain news organizations only strike a deal with Bing? And certain forums only strike to deal with Google? This is so shortsighted and they didn’t even get an appreciable amount of money for fucking us over.

AlexanderESmith ,

SearXNG

morgunkorn , (edited )
@morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Honestly, any platforms hosting user-generated content who use the legal argument that they only provide hosting and aren’t responsible for what their user post shouldn’t also be able to sell the same data and claim owning any of it.

Otherwise, take away their legal immunity. Nazis or pedophiles post something awful? You get in front of the judge.

edit: typo

aramis87 ,

Good point!

givesomefucks ,

Can’t sell something you don’t own.

So if they’re selling the parts people want, they need to own the parts no one wants.

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