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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.

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

bappity ,
@bappity@lemmy.world avatar

profiting off of user generated content 😒

MichaelTen ,
@MichaelTen@lemmy.world avatar

Minimum royalty laws should exist!

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.

MedicPigBabySaver ,

Fuck Spez

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

Gross.

No thanks.

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

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.

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

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.

Lemminary ,

I’m not sure what Reddit is still doing with that spaz. Ditch the fucker.

JaymesRS , (edited )

Robots.txt isn’t a binding agreement, this isn’t stopping anyone for whom their drive for profit outweighs their ethics.

Also, Fuck Spez.

MataVatnik ,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Late stage capitalism

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?

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