Reddit takes a stand against data crawlers with new API charging policy

Reddit, known as the “front page of the Internet”, has made a significant announcement that it will start charging companies who excessively use its data-downloading API. Reddit’s API will remain free to developers who want to create apps and bots that help people use Reddit, as well as to researchers who wish to study Reddit for academic or non-commercial reasons. However, companies that “crawl” Reddit for data and “don’t return any of that value” to users will have to pay.

“As a platform with one of the largest corpus of human-to-human conversations online, spanning the past 18 years, we have an obligation to our communities to be stewards of this content,” says Reddit in its blog post.

This move is significant as it is one of the first examples of a social network charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT. Reddit has been a popular platform for companies to mine data and insights about users. However, this move by Reddit will ensure that only companies that bring value to its users or pay for it will have access to its data.