In an interview with The Verge, Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman criticized companies like Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity for not compensating Reddit for the information they extract from the platform, leading to some companies being blocked. Huffman mentioned that Reddit has agreements with companies like Google and OpenAI to receive compensation for their data. Huffman claimed that while Reddit did try to negotiate with Microsoft, no agreement was reached. Without proper agreements in place, Huffman stated that Reddit will have to block companies that do not compensate for the data they use. Reddit has already taken steps to prevent unauthorized data scraping by search engines, including blocking Bing. Microsoft’s refusal to comply with Reddit’s terms of service resulted in the blocking of Bing. Reddit emphasized the importance of companies abiding by their policies to protect users. The story was updated to provide more details on the unsuccessful negotiations between Reddit and Microsoft regarding data scraping.
