Reddit cracks down on data policy; will begin charging businesses using its API

In a move aimed at tightening up its data policy and potentially monetising its services, Reddit has announced that it will begin charging businesses for using its application programming interface (API). The social media platform, which plans to go public on Wall Street in the coming months, recently announced in its press release that it will introduce a “new premium access point” for third parties that need more capabilities and rights, as well as higher usage limits.

The move comes after executives at Reddit noticed that various organisations are making money from Artificial Intelligence except them. So now it looks like tech giants like Google or popular ChatGPT-maker OpenAI will no longer be able to use Reddit’s API for free in order to train their AI chatbots. The company hasn’t mentioned any pricing details yet but said that it will update its Terms and Conditions to make use of Reddit’s data.

NEWS: Reddit follows Twitters lead and begin charging the biggest companies for API access. pic.twitter.com/0XqaN9jBRi

— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) April 18, 2023

This decision by Reddit is part of a broader trend among social media giants to restrict third-party access to their data. Twitter CEO Elon Musk made a similar decision earlier this year by charging for access to the company’s API. However, Artificial Intelligence researchers have long been scraping Reddit’s site and feeding the data into the development of large language models (LLMs). Google’s conversational AI chatbot Bard, for example, was created using the same data.

Reddit’s founder and chief executive Steve Huffman stated, “Crawling Reddit, generating value, and not returning any of that value to our users” is something they have a problem with. It’s not yet known when the new terms will come into effect, but the developers and third parties will be notified 60 days prior to the changes.