Social media platform Reddit has blocked all other search engines except Google. The website has decided to block engines like DuckDuckGo, Bing and will streamline all users’ queries on Google. According to a recent report, Reddit recently implemented a policy under which it prevents search engines from indexing and displaying its recent posts and comments unless the search engine agrees to a paid partnership, making it pay for search engines to index its most up-to-date content.

This report was published in 2014. 404 MediaThis suggests that Google is the only mainstream research engine that shows recent results when searching posts on Reddit. It is being speculated that this move is probably due to a deal between the two other companies. Google has paid Reddit USD 60 million to use the data to train AI models.

Old results are still visible, but other search engines are no longer able to “crawl” Reddit for new content. This shows that Google is one step ahead of its competitors and is close to a monopoly.

This is a bold move on Reddit’s part, but not all that surprising. Reddit’s increased data security measures reflect its evolving business strategy, which prioritizes revenue growth and investor satisfaction by limiting access to its content and exploring alternative revenue sources.

Reddit’s move to restrict access to its data is part of a larger industry trend, as many websites are now taking action against the data scraping practices of AI companies, by blocking bots and updating their robots.txt files to explicitly prohibit automated data collection, protecting their content from unwanted scraping. The current robots.txt file is set to prevent all web crawling, including regular search engines (the July 23 archived version does not do this).

Reddit has openly expressed its dissatisfaction with AI firms exploiting its site for training purposes and has taken decisive action to thwart these attempts, making a strong statement about its commitment to data privacy and its willingness to confront those who abuse its platform. In the same process, it also warned Google about the same. Earlier this year, Reddit announced that it had reached a USD 60 million settlement with Google, allowing it to license Reddit content to train its AI products.

Reddit’s implementation of API fees marked a turning point in its relationship with third-party developers, as the move to make money from access to its data forced several beloved apps to cease operations, leaving a void in the community and sparking debate about the platform’s commitment to openness and collaboration.