Within the coming weeks, Reddit will begin blocking most automated bots from accessing its public information. You’ll have to make a licensing deal, like Google and OpenAI have accomplished, to make use of Reddit content material for mannequin coaching and different industrial functions.
Whereas this has technically been Reddit’s coverage already, the corporate is now implementing it by updating its robots.txt file, a core a part of the online that dictates how internet crawlers are allowed to entry a web site. “It’s a sign to those that don’t have an settlement with us that they shouldn’t be accessing Reddit information,” the corporate’s chief authorized officer, Ben Lee, tells me. “It’s additionally a sign to unhealthy actors that the phrase ‘permit’ in robots.txt doesn’t imply, and has by no means meant, that they’ll use the information nevertheless they need.”
