Reddit Blocks Microsoft Access For Taking Unlicensed Data

Reddit doesn't want the data to be used for free (photo: dock. unsplash)

JAKARTA CEO of Reddit Steve Huffman said that Microsoft has taken data from its platform without permission. This data is used to train the company's Artificial Intelligence (AI) model. Microsoft not only uses Reddit data to train AI, but also sells such data via Bing API to search engines. Huffman explains that Microsoft and other companies act as if data on the internet could be used for free. "Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity have acted as if all the content on the internet could be used for free," Huffman said in his latest interview, quoted from The Verge. "That's their true position." In order not to harm the company and its users, Reddit has invited the three companies to negotiate and pay for the data they use. However, Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity refused to strike an agreement. "Without this agreement, we have no sound or knowledge of how our data is displayed and for what the data is used," explained Huffman. "(We) block people who are not willing to agree with how we want our data to be used or not to be used."

Huffman said that the act of blocking the entire company was very troublesome, but they had to. From last July, the former robot.txt Reddit has been updated to block web propagators who don't want to work together. Reddit now only displays the results of their search on Google because the company is willing to pay. Data from this discussion platform cannot be accessed through other search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, and much more. Microsoft realizes that they can no longer access Reddit data due to blocking. Microsoft spokesman Caitlin Rouston also said that, "We respect the directions given by websites that don't want content on their pages to be used with our generative AI model."