“Reddit isn’t denying that it might block crawlers. “In terms of crawlers, we don’t have anything to share on that topic at the moment,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge, clarifying that the company’s earlier “nothing is changing” comment only applied to logins.”
Reddit’s “nothing is changing” turned out to cover logins only. Blocking Google and Bing crawlers is still on the table if AI companies won’t pay for the data. Users wrote every post for free, and “site:reddit.com” became the standard trick for dodging SEO spam. Reddit is now holding that habit hostage to get a licensing check.