Blocking AI bots from Microsoft, others has been “pain in the a**”: Reddit CEO

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.

Per The Verge, Huffman claimed that Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity haven’t been negotiating. The three companies haven’t commented on Huffman’s interview.

“[It’s been] a real pain in the ass to block these companies,” Huffman told The Verge.

A person familiar with the matter previously told Ars that Microsoft has refused to enter an agreement that adheres to Reddit’s data-privacy rules. Speaking with The Verge, Huffman claimed Microsoft previously used data from Reddit for AI training and Bing result summaries but didn’t tell Reddit. He also claimed that data from Reddit has “been sold through the Bing API to other search engines,” per The Verge.

AI debate

A Microsoft spokesperson told me last week that “Microsoft respects the robots.txt standard and we honor the directions provided by websites that do not want content on their pages to be used with our generative AI models.” But as The Verge pointed out, Jordi Ribas, corporate VP of search and AI at Microsoft, took to X on July 29 to emphasize how the changes to Reddit favor Google “impacting competition from Bing and Bing-powered engines.”

Huffman also reportedly made reference to a June CNBC interview where Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, said: “I think that with respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ’90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, re-create with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding.” Suleyman added that his comment didn’t refer to certain types of web content, like news organizations.

“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,” Huffman said.

Reddit hasn’t disclosed how much money is needed for deals that would enable scraping from Microsoft, Perplexity, Anthropic, or smaller companies. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt told Ars last week that Reddit has been speaking “with multiple search engines” and that Reddit’s “open to working with partners big and small.”

It is likely that Reddit is targeting big AI deals, which it views as an important part of its business. Colin Hayhurst, CEO of search engine Mojeek, told Ars last week that Reddit didn’t respond to his emails about Mojeek getting blocked until 404 Media’s report came out.

Reddit’s efforts to find new revenue streams as it attempts to become profitable for the first time have been riddled with hiccups, including a massive user protest in response to Reddit’s API rule changes. The company is seeking to strike deals at a time when publishers, the music industry, and more are grappling with the legality of AI bots and looking to set precedence. Reddit’s reliance on free, user-generated content brings further complications to the debate.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder of Reddit.