Microsoft and Reddit Are Fighting About Why Bing’s Crawler Is Blocked on Reddit

Microsoft and Reddit are giving conflicting explanations for why Bing is currently blocked from crawling Reddit and showing its links in search results. Reddit, which now requires payment from anyone crawling its site and using its data to train AI products, says Bing's crawler is being used to power AI products. Microsoft says it has made it easy for any site to block the crawler used for AI products while still allowing a search-only crawler, and that Reddit's block is "impacting competition" in search. Presented as further evidence, the dispute reflects how indiscriminate scraping for AI training data is eroding trust and making the internet less open.