Redditās chief executive officer Steve Huffman didnāt pull any punches with Microsoft in an interview with The Verge. He called out Microsoft and other AI search engines like Anthropic and Perplexity for not paying for the information they take from Reddit, some of which have already been blocked from Huffmanās website.
Reddit has deals in places with companies like Google and OpenAI to receive compensation for using its posts and information. Huffman says Microsoft, however, hasnāt even stepped up to the table to discuss its use of Redditās content in its AI searches.
āWithout these agreements, we donāt have any say or knowledge of how our data is displayed and what itās used for, which has put us in a position now of blocking folks who havenāt been willing to come to terms with how weād like our data to be used or not used,ā Huffman told The Vergeās deputy editor Alex Heath.
Huffman says if Microsoft and other AI search sites continue to use Redditās information without proper compensation, theyāll have to be blocked. He doesnāt want to do that because itās āa real pain in the ass to block these companies.ā
Reddit has started cracking down on search engines that expunge information from its various forms and communities. The website vowed to block unauthorized data scraping in June by updating its Robots Exclusion Protocol (robots.txt) and itās already prevented Bing from accessing data from Reddit, a fact confirmed by Microsoftās head of search Jordi Ribas on X.
Earlier this month, a source confirmed to Engadgetās Will Shanklin that Microsoftās refusal to work with Redditās terms of service led to the blocking of Bing. A spokesperson from Reddit also said, āAnyone accessing Reddit content must abide by our policies, including those in place to protect redditors. We are selective about who we work with and trust with large-scale access to Reddit content.ā
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/reddit-ceo-wants-microsoft-to-pay-for-its-content-212320245.html?src=rss