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Short version: On July 31, 2024, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Microsoft, Anthropic and Perplexity should negotiate paid agreements to use Reddit data. Huffman alleged that Microsoft had used Reddit material to train AI systems, summarize posts in Bing and make Reddit data available through a Bing API. Those were allegations, not findings established by a court or independent technical audit.
Reddit had also restricted Bing’s crawler, so newer Reddit discussions became much harder to find in Bing while Google continued to show Reddit results under a reported licensing arrangement. The episode exposed a larger conflict over whether public web pages are merely crawlable or valuable commercial data that search and AI companies must license.
What Reddit accused Microsoft of doing
In an interview with The Verge, Huffman said Reddit believed Microsoft had:
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- summarized Reddit material in Bing without Reddit’s knowledge; and
- made Reddit data available to other search engines through a Bing API.
Huffman’s position was that companies benefiting from Reddit’s enormous archive of discussions should pay for access rather than treating every publicly viewable page as free commercial input. Microsoft declined to comment directly on the specific allegations in that report.
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Reddit named Anthropic and Perplexity as well as Microsoft. Anthropic said Reddit had been on its crawler block list since mid-May 2024 and that it had not added Reddit URLs since then. Perplexity did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
What Microsoft said
Microsoft’s public account focused on crawling. Jordi Ribas, Microsoft’s head of search, said Reddit had blocked Bing’s crawler, which affected Bing and search engines powered by Bing while favoring another search provider.
Separately, Microsoft spokesperson Caitlin Roulston said Microsoft honored directions from websites that did not want their content used with Microsoft’s generative-AI models. That statement is not an admission that Microsoft used Reddit without permission, nor does it resolve Huffman’s claims about earlier access or specific Bing products.
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Why Reddit wanted payment
Reddit’s business model was changing. Traditionally, a search engine crawled pages, indexed them and sent visitors back to the publisher. The traffic was the implicit exchange for access.
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AI search blurred that bargain. A system can retrieve Reddit discussions, summarize them in an answer and potentially satisfy the user without a visit to Reddit. A model can also use the material during training, creating value that is harder to measure in referrals. Reddit had already reached data-access agreements with Google and OpenAI and wanted other companies to negotiate comparable arrangements.
The commonly reported value of Google’s deal was approximately $50 million per year, although the cited coverage did not publish a complete contract. The price of Reddit’s OpenAI arrangement was not disclosed. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt told The Verge that the deals completed at that point did not grant exclusive use cases.
Why Google could show Reddit while Bing could not
Reddit announced a robots.txt update on June 25, 2024. After the change, current Reddit pages were substantially restricted or absent from Bing, although older indexed links could remain visible. This should not be described as every Reddit URL being permanently deindexed.
Google’s continuing visibility was consistent with its reported licensing relationship with Reddit. That did not mean Google had an exclusive legal monopoly over Reddit content. A nonexclusive contract can nevertheless create an exclusive-looking experience if one major search engine has a data agreement and another is blocked from direct crawling.
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Robots.txt is a crawler instruction, not a complete legal answer
robots.txt is a public file that tells compliant crawlers which parts of a site the publisher requests they not fetch. It can be an important technical signal, but it is not a universal copyright license or court ruling.
- It does not automatically determine whether earlier copying was lawful.
- It does not necessarily control authenticated API access, caches, syndicated material or data acquired from a partner.
- It depends on the crawler respecting the instruction.
- Reddit’s own help documentation says its robots.txt rules are for search engines, not Data API users.
Microsoft’s Bing Search API terms separately say API users must not use responses for websites whose content is restricted by that website, including where a crawler has been blocked through robots.txt. That is a product rule, not proof that every underlying Reddit use was authorized or unauthorized.
Scraping, indexing, summaries and training are different
| Activity | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling | A bot fetches pages. | It is the technical act of accessing content. |
| Indexing | A search engine stores information about pages. | It enables links and discovery. |
| Search presentation or summarization | A product displays or synthesizes material in an answer. | It can reduce clicks and raise attribution and licensing questions. |
| Model training | Data influences development or tuning of an AI model. | It is a different technical and legal use from ordinary indexing. |
| API redistribution | Data or search responses are supplied to another customer or service. | Contractual limits may apply even when pages are publicly viewable. |
A publisher might allow crawling for links while forbidding model training. Conversely, a paid agreement might authorize a controlled retrieval system while limiting retention, redistribution or general-purpose training. Calling all of these activities “scraping” hides the actual dispute.
The public-web argument is not settled law
Microsoft AI executive Mustafa Suleyman was reported as describing public internet data as “freeware.” Reddit took the opposite commercial position: public accessibility does not automatically remove the need for permission, compensation or attribution.
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The legal answer can vary with copyright, contracts and terms of service, privacy rules, database rights, jurisdiction and the exact technical use. Robots.txt alone does not make scraping illegal, and a public URL alone does not establish unrestricted permission for every downstream use.
What users noticed
For people searching in Bing, newer Reddit answers became less reliable or disappeared. That particularly affected current troubleshooting threads, niche communities and discussions that had not existed when Bing’s older index was built. Google remained the more dependable route in the immediate aftermath.
The trade-off is broader than convenience. Blocking crawlers can create licensing revenue and give Reddit more control over training, summaries, retention and attribution. It can also reduce referral traffic, weaken discovery of smaller communities and push users toward the largest licensed search partner. Bing Webmaster Tools can help publishers manage Microsoft’s crawler, but it cannot control every AI crawler, API, cache or third-party dataset.
What Reddit’s current API terms say
Reddit’s Data API terms, revised July 20, 2026, show that the controlled-access approach continued after the 2024 confrontation. The terms say:
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- API access is a revocable license;
- Reddit may charge fees in the future;
- commercial use, research beyond rate limits or uses not expressly permitted may require a separate agreement; and
- User Content may not be used to train an AI or machine-learning model without express permission from applicable rights holders.
The same terms say User Content remains owned by users. It is therefore inaccurate to say Reddit owns every post or that a Reddit-wide license automatically resolves every individual creator’s rights.
What remains unresolved
The available reporting does not establish whether Microsoft used Reddit data in every way Huffman alleged, whether the companies later negotiated a deal, whether a settlement or lawsuit occurred, or whether a later agreement changed Bing’s access. Microsoft may also have encountered Reddit-derived information through existing indexes, licensed sources, caches or other channels; blocking direct crawling does not erase all historical data.
The lasting significance is the business model. Reddit’s dispute was an early, visible example of publishers moving from “crawl us and send traffic” toward “license our discussions if they become part of your search or AI product.” The same question now confronts forums, news sites and other services built on user-generated content: who controls public web data, and who gets paid when it is turned into a commercial answer?
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