Recently, Reddit has taken a notable action by beginning to restrict access to its content for major search engines and AI bots. According to a report by 404Media, Reddit has decided not to allow easy access to recent posts and comments by some mainstream search engines unless they are willing to pay. This means that if you are not searching through Google, you may not be able to find the latest Reddit content.
Currently, Google is the only mainstream search engine that can display the latest results when using the "site:reddit.com" search. Other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo are excluded. The reason for this is primarily because Google has signed a $60 million agreement with Reddit, allowing Google to use Reddit's data to train its AI models. As a result, search engines like Bing are left unable to access this content.
Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt stated that this decision is not directly related to the collaboration with Google. In fact, Reddit has been negotiating with multiple search engines to try to reach agreements. However, many search engines have not been clear enough about their commitments to using Reddit's content, leading to a failure to reach a consensus.
For Reddit, taking such measures is not too surprising. Over the past year, Reddit has become increasingly focused on its own data and hopes to open up new sources of revenue through these measures to attract new investors. Previously, Reddit had increased the cost of its API usage and threatened Google that if it continued to use Reddit's data to train AI for free, Reddit would consider cutting off its cooperation.
In addition, to enforce this policy, Reddit has updated its website's robots.txt file. This file is an important reference for web crawlers to determine whether they can access a website. Reddit's Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said that this update sends a clear signal to crawlers that have not reached an agreement with Reddit, indicating that they should not access Reddit's data.
Nowadays, as AI chatbots flood the internet, many people are beginning to crave human-created content, as human perspectives are more authentic compared to machine-generated content. Like many others, I have started to add "Reddit" to my searches to find human answers, but this has now become more difficult. For someone like me who is accustomed to using Bing, this is quite frustrating.
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🌐 **Paywall Enacted**: Reddit restricts access to content for search engines and AI bots, requiring payment for access.
🤖 **Google Exclusive Access**: Only Google can access the latest results with "site:reddit.com", excluding other search engines.
💰 **Data Monetization Strategy**: Reddit strengthens data protection, increases API fees, and seeks new revenue sources to attract investors.