Reddit locks down its content

Reddit has announced a new public content policy designed to stop companies from accessing its data without an agreement and protect its user's privacy rights.

What’s in Reddit’s new content policy?

While Reddit is allowing non-commercial and research outlets (they have an exclusive, new subreddit: r/reddit4researchers) to continue to use its user-posted content, they’ve stated that any company wanting to use its data to “power, augment or enhance products for commercial purposes” will need a contract and will have to pay for the privilege.

The new policy also states that Reddit partners will not be allowed to use its content for ad-targeting or to conduct “background checks, facial recognition, government surveillance, or help law enforcement do any of the above”, and they have reassured users that it will never sell non-public, personal information, such as private messages, email addresses or phone numbers, with data licensees, which includes AI companies.

Why has Reddit created this new content policy?

Reddit has been caught between a rock and a hard place: On one side, there’s an opportunity to make some serious money by selling their data to big tech companies who are desperate to use it for AI model training:

“It doesn’t make sense for Reddit to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.” – Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO

But on the other side, they need to make sure their user's privacy rights are protected:

“Unfortunately, we see more and more commercial entities using unauthorized access or misusing authorized access to collect Reddit public content… these entities perceive they have no limitation on their usage of that data, and they do so with no regard for user rights or privacy, ignoring reasonable legal, safety, and user removal requests.”  – Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO

This content policy seems like a way of balancing out these two desires and making sure there are “clear terms so that everybody knows what’s going on.”

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