"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," spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells
The Verge.
The Internet Archive's mission is to keep a digital archive of websites on the internet and
"other cultural artifacts," and the Wayback Machine is a tool you can use to look at pages as they appeared on certain dates, but Reddit believes not all of its content should be archived that way."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," Rathschmidt says.