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As the battle to train artificial intelligence models becomes more intense and Reddits 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 sites 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 sites 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 weve been made aware of instances where AI companies violate platform policies, including ours, and scrape data from the Wayback Machine. Until theyre able to defend their site and comply with platform policies (e.g., respecting user privacy, re: deleting removed content) were 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%. Reddits 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 Reddits public protests regarding Anthropics misuse of Reddit content, that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit. Not so,” the suit reads. “Anthropics bots continued to hit Reddits 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. “Were unifying [search and Reddit Answers] into a single search experience. Were going to bring that front and center in the app. So, whether youre 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 Reddits 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. “Conversation and connection are becoming more valuable and rare,” said Huffman. “In a world increasingly dominated by algorithms and automation, the need for human voices has never been greater.”
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E-Commerce
Eastman Kodak, the iconic American company known for its photography and film business, said it is at risk of going out of business, prompting a massive stock slide on Tuesday. Here’s what to know. Kodak Q2 2025 earnings Let’s start with Kodak’s earnings report on Monday. For the second quarter ending June 30, Kodak reported its revenue was $263 million, a decrease of $4 million, or 1%, compared with the same period in 2024. Adjusting for the favorable impact of foreign exchange of $5 million, revenues decreased by $9 million, or 3%, compared with the year prior. Kodak ended the quarter with a cash balance of $155 million, a decrease of $46 million from December 31, 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by capital expenditures to fund growth initiatives, changes in working capital, the impact of higher costs, and lower profitability from operations. Most importantly, Kodak included a disclosure regarding its concern assessment in its second quarter 2025 Form 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In its earnings press release, the 133-year-old company said current financial conditions “raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” which publicly traded companies are required to mention. The reason: It doesn’t have the ability to pay its debt obligation, which runs some $500 million, according to CNN. Kodak stock price slides As a result, shares of Eastman Kodak (NYSE: KODK) fell more than 7% in premarket trading on Tuesday, and at the time of this writing, were down a whopping 25% in early afternoon trading. Kodak is a leading global manufacturer focused on commercial print and advanced materials and chemicals. Founded in 1882 by George Eastman, it has earned 79,000 worldwide patents over 130 years of R&D (research and development) and is known as a pioneer in the photography business, specializing in both cameras and film. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy as its business became increasingly irrelevant with the advent of digital photography and smartphone cameras.
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E-Commerce
The U.S. stock market is rallying toward records on Tuesday after data suggested inflation across the country was a touch better last month than economists expected. The S&P 500 rose 0.9% and was on track to top its all-time high set two weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 467 points, or 1.1%, as of 12:30 p.m. ET, while the Nasdaq composite was 1.1% higher and also heading toward a record. Stocks got a lift from hopes that the better-than-expected inflation report will give the Federal Reserve leeway to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September. Lower rates would give a boost to investment prices and to the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow to buy houses, cars, or equipment. President Donald Trump has angrily been calling for cuts to help the economy, often insulting the Feds chair personally while doing so. But the Fed has been hesitant because of the possibility that Trumps tariffs could make inflation much worse. Lowering rates would give inflation more fuel, potentially adding oxygen to a growing fire. Thats why Fed officials have said they wanted to see more data come in about inflation before moving. Tuesdays report said U.S. consumers paid prices for groceries, gasoline, and other costs of living that were 2.7% higher in July than a year earlier. Thats the same inflation rate as Junes, and it was below the 2.8% that economists expected. The report pushed traders on Wall Street to increase bets that the Fed will cut interest rates for the first time this year in September. They’re betting on a 94% chance of that, up from nearly 86% a day earlier, according to data from CME Group. The Fed will receive one more report on inflation, as well as one more on the U.S. job market, before its next meeting, which ends Sept. 17. The most recent jobs report was a stunner, coming in much weaker than economists expected. Some economists warn that more twists and turns in upcoming data could make the Feds upcoming decisions not so easy. Its twin goals are to get inflation to 2% while keeping the job market healthy, and helping one with interest rates often means hurting the other. Even Tuesdays better-than-expected inflation report had some discouraging undertones. An underlying measure of inflation, which economists say does a better job of predicting where inflation may be heading, hit its highest point since early this year, noted Gary Schlossberg, market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. That helped cause some up-and-down swings for Treasury yields in the bond market. Eventually, tariffs can show up in varying degrees in consumer prices, but these one-off price increases dont happen all at once, said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. That will confound the Fed and economic commentators for months to come. Other central banks around the world have been lowering interest rates, and Australias on Tuesday cut for the third time this year. On Wall Street, Intel’s stock rose 3.2% after Trump said its CEO has an amazing story, less than a week after he had demanded Lip-Bu Tans resignation. Circle Internet Group, the company behind the popular USDC cryptocurrency that tracks the U.S. dollar, climbed 2.4% despite reporting a larger loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It said its total revenue and reserve income grew 53% in its first quarter as a publicly traded company, and it topped forecasts. On the losing side of Wall Street was Celanese, which sank 10.3% even though the chemical company delivered a better profit than expected. It said that customers in most of its markets continue to be challenged, and CEO Scott Richardson said that the demand environment does not seem to be improving. Cardinal Health dropped 7.3% despite likewise reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue fell short of forecasts, and analysts said the markets expectations were particularly high for the company after its stock had already soared 33.3% for the year coming into the day. Critics say the broad U.S. stock market is looking expensive after its surge from a bottom in April. Thats putting pressure on companies to deliver continued growth in profit. In stock markets abroad, indexes edged up in China after Trump signed an executive order late Monday that delayed hefty tariffs on the worlds second-largest economy by 90 days. The move was widely expected, and the hope is that it will clear the way for a possible deal to avert a dangerous trade war between the United States and China. Japans Nikkei 225 jumped 2.1%, and South Koreas Kospi fell 0.5%, for two of the worlds bigger moves. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.30% from 4.27% late Monday. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, fell to 3.73% from 3.76%. By Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
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E-Commerce
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