When we have a question, we ask Google or any other search engine we are using, such as Bing or DuckDuckGo. These perform a search on all the websites they have indexed and return the results that, in theory, will resolve our doubts. Due to a recent agreement with Google, Reddit forums will no longer appear in queries made on the Microsoft Bing search engine, among others.
There are many forums on the internet, but the most well-known and one of the most used is Reddit. It has thousands of different categories, in fact, you can find categories for practically everything you can imagine.
The popularity of this forum has increased rapidly due to the amount of irrelevant content that often appears when queries are made. Many of these do not solve the user’s problem, they only seek to obtain income without providing useful information. This has caused Google, for example, to prioritize Reddit over other portals.
Reddit will block Bing and other search engines for this reason
We know that Google wants to remain the most used search engine by users. Recently, it has enhanced its partnership with Reddit to gain access to this forum’s data API. Thanks to this, Google will receive improved real-time signals to better understand the content. This will be used to train its AI and improve search results.
The agreement reached by Google and Reddit is to block access to content from other search engines. As a result, users who use Bing, DuckDuckGo or any other search engine will no longer see Reddit appear.
This has nothing to do with our recent partnership with Google. We have been in talks with several search engines, but have not been able to reach agreements with all of them, as some are unable or unwilling to make promises that can be kept regarding their use of Reddit content, including its use for artificial intelligence.
Tim Rathschmidt, Reddit spokesperson
Clearly, we see how Reddit wants to get paid for training AI models with the content available. Currently, they were using the content of millions of users of the platform without permission.
Microsoft has already made a statement on the matter, stressing that it no longer crawls Reddit as of July 1. It stresses that it respects the “robots.txt” file, a type of file that all websites have that tells search engines what content they can index.
Remember that Reddit signed an agreement with OpenAI earlier this year to access the forum’s data API. The idea is to use this forum to train its models.
Big tech companies are paying for exclusive access to valuable data sources. These partnerships raise questions about the future of the open internet as we know it and the consolidation of power.
This means that small organisations and independent researchers who lack financial resources will not be able to compete. Not only will this leave them behind, it will also greatly limit innovation and competition.
Regulatory bodies such as the FTC in the United States or the European Commission are not currently evaluating these agreements. They may not take long to do so, as they could violate free competition and create monopolies.
