There is a lot of information (and misinformation) that gets passed around about the Reddit Terms of Service and what that means for authors. Sometimes it comes up in comments, other times it comes up as standalone posts. And a lot of the time, it just leaves authors confused rather than helping them.

As such, I decided to update a comment I made here several years back in order to clarify and cover the current terms of service.

I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. If you have legal concerns, you should contact a lawyer and speak with them.

Before I get started, I feel like I should clarify a few things about terms of service as contracts, and how contract law is handled.

First, and perhaps most important: contracts are not interpreted via “technically this can mean…” genie-isms. Contracts are meant to codify the intent of two or more parties into a coherent, legally binding whole.

This means that a lack of clarity is a problem for them. In the event that a contract is the subject of a legal case, a significant portion of the time invested in the case would be put into determining the intent and context behind the contract. For example, if a contract uses the word “dollars” without clarification, you would not reasonably get away with using the old, no longer legal Zimbabwean Dollar. The context of the contract matters. If it is between two US citizens, the United States Dollar is going to be the expectation. Between two New Zealanders, it would be NZD. Between citizens of two countries with different dollars, it would result in a back and forth that would need to determine which dollar was intended and how to handle a mismatch.

Second, and nearly as important as the first: Terms of Service are one-sided in nature, which means ambiguity is considered Reddit’s fault. When contracts are controlled by only one party, the default ruling is against that party in the case of ambiguity. This means that if something is not explicitly covered by the terms of service, it is not covered. If Reddit does not take a right for themselves explicitly via the text, they do not have that right.

Now that I have that out of the way, I feel like I may as well answer a few likely questions before they come up:

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• I want to get my story published by a traditional publishing house. Can I post it to Reddit?

Can you? Yes. Should you? No. Do not post your story to Reddit. Do not post your story to social media. Do not post your story anywhere at all. Traditional publishing houses prefer to have two specific rights to stories they publish, and posting your story online can ruin its chances with these publishers.

The first right most of them want is exclusive publishing rights to your story. That means any existing license to publish the story (like those websites are required to include in terms of service in order to safely host your content) is a conflict that prevents the publisher from having that exclusivity.

The second right that most of them want is the right to first publication. To put it rather crudely, they want your story’s virginity. If you’ve popped your story’s cherry by posting it online, that’s gone. They can’t be the first to publish it anymore.

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• I want to self publish my story. Can I post it to Reddit?

Maybe. The answer to that is going to depend on how you are self publishing the story. It would be a good idea for you to investigate any company you consider as a publisher. Contact a lawyer, have them look over the contract. Some self publishing companies are legitimate and above-board. Others will publish but take advantage of you. And yet others are purely scams.

Even if the publishing company is legitimate, it may put limitations on how and where you can post your story. Kindle, for example, will limit how much of your story is allowed to be accessible for free when you subscribe to certain parts of their publishing service, such as Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Direct Publishing. The specific details will vary by publisher, and so the answer to this question varies as well.

However, when a publisher limits how much of a story you are allowed to post, that does not necessarily mean you were not allowed to post it at all. Most publishers in this case, especially Amazon with Kindle Unlimited, care more about the story’s current state rather than whether or not it was published before. You can post your stories to Reddit now, then remove them later if you choose to self publish. If you do so on HFY, please mind Rules 7 and 8 and either remove the story entirely, or leave a 350 word summary or quote when you link to the published copy.

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• Doesn’t Reddit own everything I post?

No, they very explicitly do not. They disclaim ownership of user-generated content for their own protection, because owning what you post would be a very significant liability for them. And that’s on top of the fact that it may not actually be legally possible for them to acquire direct ownership via a Terms of Service, since actual ownership (as opposed to license to use) is treated very, very strictly by IP laws.

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• Can’t Reddit sell my posts?

No. The Terms of Service does not include any provision that allows them to directly sell your comments and posts. In fact, they used to have a clause that granted them that ability in a much older version of the Terms, and that clause has long since been removed. That removal, in conjunction with what I mentioned above about one-sided contracts being ruled against the provider of the contract, means that Reddit would need to explicitly add a new commercialization clause into the contract if they wanted to legally sell content you submit to the site.

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• Can Reddit train AI off of my stories?

This one’s a tough one to answer, but mostly because machine learning is new legal ground that hasn’t been properly tested in court or defined by law. There is not a clear cut answer to this question. This is because there are two reasonable ways to interpret how machine learning works, from a legal perspective.

If the prevailing interpretation winds up being that using IP in a training set means the training set is a derivative work, then that means the same rules apply to training AI as to someone who wants to grab a copy of your post, edit it, and post it somewhere else.

The other potential interpretation is that AI actually learns from the training materials, but is not a derivative work. Under this interpretation, any post you can legally access is a post that can be used to train AI, so long as it does not have a license that specifically and explicitly forbids that use. However, Reddit has specific policies in place on how a post is allowed to be accessed and shared, which is tied to the recent API changes. Scraping an entire subreddit for training materials is likely to violate these policies, making the means of accessing posts for training materials illegal.

Both of these are current and viable legal interpretations, and until it gets settled in a court or via new laws being written and passed, many people are going to pick and choose the interpretation most convenient to them.

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What about the actual terms of service? What do they mean?

Reddit’s Terms of Service, at least as of June 19th, 2023, is what is generally referred to as a “boilerplate” contract. In other words, it’s very generic and you see variations of the same terms and conditions on a lot of different websites.

As for what is relevant to authors, that would be section 5, “Your Content”. This section has a slight variation based on your region, and you can see the full terms of service here. For this section and what it means, let’s break that down:

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The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”).

This subsection is the definitions. They’re creating and defining terms that they’ll use in the rest of section 5, and what those mean. Content being anything you can post to Reddit, and your content being content that was posted by you (or through your account).

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We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content.

Here, Reddit is saying that they can’t be held liable for what you post. If you post something that gets someone killed, they pass the buck to you. If you post the entirety of Frozen, Disney’s lawyers get pointed at you rather than Reddit. Basically, no responsibility on their part to verify your content in advance.

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By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights.

This is a continuation of the above bit about responsibilities and rights. Content you post is done under the assumption you have the legal right to post it. If you steal the content, that’s on you and not Reddit. If you are not allowed to share the content, that is not Reddit’s fault. Any legal repercussions from sharing something you shouldn’t fall squarely on your shoulders, and Reddit doesn’t want any part of that.

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You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content:

Reddit isn’t able to claim ownership of anything you post. In a lot of ways, that isn’t even possible for them to do. In a lot of other ways, it would be incredibly dangerous for them to claim it even if they could. But, they still need to have the right to do things with what you post, so in order to protect themselves and make use of your content, they require that you grant them certain rights to anything you post.

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When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license

When you post something on Reddit, you give them a license that applies in every country on Earth. You can’t charge them for this license, and the license does not expire. You can’t take this license away, either. The license is non-exclusive, which means that other licenses to the same content can exist. (So you can also post your stories elsewhere, publish them, etc.)

Reddit can transfer this license, and is also allowed to provide the content under the same license. These two terms in particular are currently used for the API and allowing content to be delivered to it, as well as allowing for Reddit to be acquired, sell rights to the site and services, or even split into multiple sub-companies the way Google did with Alphabet.

The real sticking point here, for many people, is that it is an irrevocable license. While that isn’t unheard of, it is relatively uncommon. For people creating stories or art, that can be a point of contention.

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to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content

This section needs a bit of explanation on the technical side of things. Legally speaking, what this covers is storing your posts on their servers, delivering it to web browsers, allowing things like text to speech to read your posts aloud, etc. As a specific example, applying markdown to your post to change the formatting technically counts as preparing a derivative work. So does showing a small abbreviated section of the post as a preview.

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and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content

This is literally just associating your posts and comments with your account. (As well as any photos, videos, selfies, etc. that you might share)

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in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.

This lets them display your posts on any device capable of displaying or interacting with the website, even if it hasn’t been invented yet.

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This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit.

You know that big to-do about the API recently? This clause here is required for them to deliver your content via API. It also covers things like allowing other websites or apps to embed all or part of a Reddit post, too. So when you link your post on Discord and get that little embed, this is why it can happen.

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You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content,

This is important for Reddit as an image host, because it lets them strip exif data out of images to help protect you. It’s not uncommon for devices to automatically geotag photos when you take them, and that data is super easy to extract if it doesn’t get removed.

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and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.

This right here is a big sticking point for a lot of authors, and for good reason. Moral rights, and more specifically the right to attribution, are very important. This clause is actually illegal in some places, such as Italy. (The terms of service have a clause further down that prevents the whole thing from being invalidated, however. So that doesn’t mean the whole ToS is invalid if you live in Italy.)

What Reddit uses this for is retaining your posts and comments if your account is removed. Since removed accounts don’t show their original username, they need to have you waive the right to attribution in order to keep displaying the content with the “[deleted]” username instead.

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Any ideas, suggestions, and feedback about Reddit or our Services that you provide to us are entirely voluntary, and you agree that Reddit may use such ideas, suggestions, and feedback without compensation or obligation to you.

This bit is pretty straightforward. If you choose to suggest a change or feature to Reddit, they don’t owe you anything. They have no need to respond to you, pay you, or even consult with you. This protects them from cases where someone might try to claim the rights to a feature after suggesting it.

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Although we have no obligation to screen, edit, or monitor Your Content, we may, in our sole discretion, delete or remove Your Content at any time and for any reason, including for violating these Terms, violating our Content Policy, or if you otherwise create or are likely to create liability for us.

Although we reserve the right to review, screen, edit, or monitor Your Content, we do not necessarily review all of it at the time it’s submitted to the Services. However, we may, in our sole discretion, delete or remove Your Content at any time and for any reason, including for violating these Terms, violating our Content Policy, or if you otherwise create or are likely to create liability for us.

I have two different copies of this section because there are two versions of it depending on where you live. Ultimately, they serve the same overall purpose. This is so Reddit and subbreddit moderators can remove your content from the site for any reason. It specifically mentions the content policy and potential liability (like uploading stolen or illegal content), but removal is not limited to those contexts.