Latest news with #ContentModeration
Fast Company
6 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
AI data wars push Reddit to block the Wayback Machine
As the battle to train artificial intelligence models becomes more intense and Reddit's rich content library becomes more valuable, the social media giant has taken steps to block the Internet Archive from indexing its pages. While the Wayback Machine has historically recorded all Reddit pages, comments and user profiles, the company has put limits on what the system can scrape. Moving forward, it will only be permitted to archive the site's home page, which shows popular posts and news headlines of the day, but no user comments or post history. The action comes as Reddit has become increasingly protective of the content on its site. Reddit, in May, announced it had struck a deal with OpenAI to use its content to help train ChatGPT. It previously announced a similar deal with Google – and blocked other search engines from crawling the site after that deal unless they struck financial agreements with Reddit as well. AI companies that are less well-financed, however, have reportedly been using the Internet Archive to scrub the site's previous posts and train their large language models from that content. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, in a statement, told Fast Company 'Internet Archive provides a service to the open web, but we've been made aware of instances where AI companies violate platform policies, including ours, and scrape data from the Wayback Machine. Until they're able to defend their site and comply with platform policies (e.g., respecting user privacy, re: deleting removed content) we're limiting some of their access to Reddit data to protect redditors.' Reddit shares were higher Tuesday, gaining more than 3% in midday trading, hitting $228. Year to date, the company's stock is up 38%. Reddit's legal battles meet its AI ambitions In June, Reddit sued Anthropic, claiming the AI company behind the Claude chatbot was scraping the Reddit site. 'In July 2024, Anthropic claimed, in response to Reddit's public protests regarding Anthropic's misuse of Reddit content, that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit. Not so,' the suit reads. 'Anthropic's bots continued to hit Reddit's servers over one hundred thousand times. … Unlike its competitors, Anthropic has refused to agree to respect Reddit users' basic privacy rights, including removing deleted posts from its systems.' (Anthropic has denied the accusations.) Reddit's latest defensive act against AI scraping comes as the company is focusing more on its own AI initiatives. Last December, the company rolled out Reddit Answers, an AI-powered tool that will summarize conversations and posts on the site, letting users bypass traditional search engines. That AI product is now used by six million people, the company said in its second quarter earnings announcement, up from one million in the first quarter. Reddit is planning to use that momentum, as well as the significant use of its own internal search engine (which the company says services 70 million users per week) to challenge Google and other popular search tools. 'The world and the internet are rapidly changing, and I believe Reddit has a once-in-a-generation opportunity,' said CEO Steve Huffman on an earnings call following the earnings. 'We're unifying [search and Reddit Answers] into a single search experience. We're going to bring that front and center in the app. So, whether you're a new user opening the app for the first time or returning user opening the app, that search box will be present immediately for users who open the app looking for something specific.' While Reddit's efforts in the search space will include AI components, the company said it hopes to differentiate itself from the growing number of AI search engines by highlighting the human component.
The Verge
31-07-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Senator proposes calling off the TikTok ban — legally.
TikTok ban: all the news on the app's shutdown and return in the US See all Stories Posted Jul 31, 2025 at 6:46 PM UTC Senator proposes calling off the TikTok ban — legally. President Donald Trump has repeatedly ignored the bipartisan law banning TikTok from operating in the US unless it's separated from Chinese parent company ByteDance. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is calling for a new way to avoid a ban without breaking the law. In a draft bill, Markey proposes letting TikTok operate in the US as long as it provides transparency into its content moderation and keeps US user data out of countries like China. TikTok Transparency and Data Security Act Fact Sheet [ Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Lauren Feiner Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Lauren Feiner Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Creators Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Politics Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Speech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All TikTok
Arab News
24-07-2025
- Business
- Arab News
TikTok says removed nearly 25 million videos in Pakistan during first quarter of 2025
ISLAMABAD: Video-sharing platform TikTok said this week it removed nearly 25 million videos in Pakistan during the first quarter of 2025 for violating its community guidelines, underscoring its efforts to ensure a safe digital space for everyone. TikTok shared the information in its Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, which covers data from January to March 2025. 'In Q1 2025, TikTok removed a total of 24,954,128 videos in Pakistan,' the video-sharing platform said in a press release on Wednesday. 'Proactive removal rates in Pakistan remained high at 99.4 percent, with 95.8 percent of these videos removed within 24 hours.' TikTok said globally it removed around 211 million videos worldwide during the quarter, which represents about 0.9 percent of all content uploaded to the platform. The platform said that of the total globally removed videos, 184,378,987 were detected and taken down using automated detection technologies, while 7,525,184 videos were reinstated after further review. 'The report also indicates that a significant portion of total removed videos— 30.1 percent— contained sensitive or mature themes that did not align with TikTok's content policies,' the statement said. The platform said that an additional 11.5 percent of the videos removed globally breached the platform's safety and civility standards, while 15.6 percent violated privacy and security guidelines. 'Additionally, 45.5 percent of the removed videos were flagged as misinformation, and 13.8 percent of the videos removed were flagged as edited media and AI-generated content,' it added. This is not the first time that TikTok has removed videos from Pakistan. It took down millions of videos in Pakistan last year also for violating community guidelines. In the past, Pakistani authorities have banned the video-sharing service several times, with the first ban instituted in October 2020 over what was described as widespread complaints about allegedly 'immoral, obscene, and vulgar' content on the app. The service has been prohibited from operating in the country thrice for more than 15 months since then. In November 2021, a Pakistani court finally reversed the ban after TikTok assured the government it would control the spread of objectionable content.
