Reddit announced new policies Thursday aimed at balancing licensing content to big tech companies like Google with protecting user privacy. The newly announced Public Content Policy joins Reddit's existing privacy and content policies and governs how commercial entities and other partners can access and use Reddit's data. In conjunction with this, the company also announced a subreddit dedicated to researchers working with Reddit data.
The announcement comes on the heels of Reddit's stock market debut, and signals that the company stands to grow revenue not only from the advertising and developer usage of its APIs that run on the platform, but also from its corpus of data. . The company said in its IPO prospectus that it has already generated $203 million in revenue through data licensing agreements and expects that number to increase over time.
Reddit previously did not block access to data for AI training purposes, but changed its policy last year. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times that it doesn't make sense for Reddit to continue to give “all of its value to some of the world's largest companies for free,” adding that the company has no data licenses. He indicated that he plans to move to . space.
Those efforts are currently well underway, and the new public content policy will further restrict access to Reddit's data without consent.
“Unfortunately, a growing number of commercial entities are using unauthorized access or abusing authorized access to collect large amounts of public data, including Reddit's public content,” Reddit said. I'm writing on my blog. “Worse still, these entities recognize that there are no restrictions on their use of data and ignore reasonable legal, security, and deletion requests by users, with no consideration for user rights or privacy.” While we continue our efforts to block known fraudsters, we restrict access to public content on Reddit to trusted actors who agree to abide by our policies. We need to do more to restrict it at scale. But we also need to continue to make it accessible to users, mods, researchers, and other well-meaning non-commercial actors.”
In other words, access to Reddit data for research and other non-commercial activities will continue, but companies that want to use Reddit data for other purposes (such as AI training) will have to pay a fee. Reddit made this clear in a diagram it shared on its blog, stating that a contract is required for companies interested in using Reddit data to “enhance, extend, or enhance their products for commercial purposes.” .
Advertisers, on the other hand, rely on advertising APIs to manage their campaigns and track their performance.
Because the company is essentially just a large website that can be indexed by search engines, this new policy ensures that Reddit content is locked down from unauthorized collections while respecting the rights of users. The purpose is
For example, Reddit says its partners must upload users' decisions to remove content. Therefore, if users do not want their personal posts to fall prey to her AI engine in the future, they should be able to opt out. The new policy also restricts partners from using her Reddit content to identify individuals or their personal information, including for ad targeting. The partners also use her Reddit content to spam or harass users, or to “perform background checks, facial recognition, government surveillance, or assist law enforcement in doing any of the above.” It also cannot be used for
The policy also restricts access to adult media and makes clear that Reddit does not sell users' personal information. The company also says it will never license non-public content such as private messages or non-public account information such as a user's email or browsing history.
To assist researchers who want to use Reddit data for non-commercial purposes, the company has created a new subreddit, r/reddit4researchers. The company said it is also developing a program in partnership with OpenMined to guide and expand the researcher's collaboration with Reddit.