Published on: August 12, 2025 03:36 pm IST
Reddit AI is blocking the weback machine by acting its posts, comments and profiles in a bid to prevent firms from scrapping data.
Here is Scoop: Reddit has banned the capacity of webac machines to collect most of its site. It is not about homepage nostalgia, it is about preserving subredits, threads, and comment chains that AI companies are turning backwards of the curtain.
AI scraping sparks shutdown
Reddit says that it is discovered that some AI developers were quietly scrapping the material from the webac machine, then using that data to train the model without license or permission. This is part of a comprehensive trend of platforms that break down on free data access in favor of the agreement made. Now, the webac machine can only index the homepage of reddit, posts, comments and user profile of-lymph.
He gave a head-up to the Internet Archive, which is at least something. Nevertheless, this step marks a dramatic change, “late everything is stored for posting” from control, cost and material ownership of a closed door policy.
What is losing, and who cares?
Wakeback machine has long been a digital time capsule for the most almanac content of the Internet. Once the reddit bots, complete conversation and a part of the Internet culture can disappear forever. Archive.org will not pull those associated snapshots, and future historians and researchers will not get a second chance to look at them.
Meanwhile, Reddit is doubled on mashing its content. Openai and Google, licensed deals with tight API, and legal action against anthropic displays the growing appetite of platforms for control and revenue.
If you have ever used a wakeback machine to revive that viral redit thread or examined an old mod declaration. This is the end of that era. Reddit is firmly saying, “You may not have this until you pay for it.” And that, in 2025, it seems more than only one policy change, it is a cultural change of how we document and preserve the web.
