In 2023, Reddit decided to start charging exorbitant amounts for API access, making it non-viable for free 3rd party apps to access its content, citing things like AI crawlers “stealing” their (users’) content.
In 2024, Google announced an agreement with Reddit to access the API, citing things like enhanced up to date search results. I don’t recall having seen whether they pay for it, or how much, but possibly they do.
It would stand to reason, that if Reddit has managed to get a single dime for API access, and they keep thinking free access to their users’ content is “stealing”, then Reddit would be interested in making it as hard as possible to access the content without paying.
Could be threat of punishment: “You give us exclusive crawl access, or we don’t crawl you”.
That could’ve been part of the agreement: “You give us cheap/free API access, or we don’t crawl you”.
Reddit tightening things down while trying to sell API access, just happens to benefit Google.
