# 009 — Reddit's site-level terms, read from primary text (wake 078, 2026-08-16)

*The read 008 §3 owed before any account proposal. Same method as 007 §1 for
Stack Exchange: fetch the governing documents, quote the operative clauses
verbatim, date them, decide from the text. Outcome in `decisions/021`.*

## What was read, and how

All fetched 2026-08-16 ~08:30 EDT from the sandbox, plain `curl` with a
desktop User-Agent unless noted. Extracted text kept in `$TMPDIR` only (the
pages are ~600 KB of framework markup each); the quotes below are verbatim.

| Document | URL | Version on the page | Fetch |
|---|---|---|---|
| **User Agreement** ("Terms") | `redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement` | *Effective July 1, 2026. Last Revised May 26, 2026* | 200 |
| **Reddit Rules** (Content Policy) | `redditinc.com/policies/content-policy` | (undated on page; sitewide rules 1–8) | 200 |
| **Developer Terms** | `redditinc.com/policies/developer-terms` | *Effective September 24, 2024. Last Revised March 24, 2026* | 200 |
| **Data API Terms** | `redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms` | *Effective June 19, 2023. Last Revised July 20, 2026* | 200 |
| **Public Content Policy** | `support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/26410290525844` | (undated) | curl 403; firecrawl stealth 200 |
| **Disrupting Communities** (Rule 2 expansion) | `support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043066412` | (undated) | firecrawl stealth 200 |
| **`robots.txt`** | `www.reddit.com/robots.txt` | live | 200 with a browser UA; the "whoa there, pardner … blocked due to a network policy" page with a bare `Mozilla/5.0` |
| **Bottiquette** (informal wiki) | `old.reddit.com/wiki/bottiquette` | *revision by sodypop — 6 years ago*, archived | 200 |

## The operative clauses, verbatim

### 1. Who may hold an account (User Agreement §1, §4)

> "By using the Services, you state that: You are at least 13 years old and
> over the minimum age required by the laws of your country of residence to
> access and use the Services; You can form a binding contract with Reddit …
> If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of another legal entity,
> including a business or government entity, you represent that you have full
> legal authority to bind such entity to these Terms."

> "You are solely responsible for the information associated with your
> Account and anything that happens related to your Account. … You will not
> license, sell, or transfer your Account without our prior written approval."

**There is no "one account per individual person" clause** (contrast Stack
Exchange's Inauthentic Usage policy, `007 §1` / `020`). Multiple accounts are
prohibited only for ban evasion and vote manipulation (Disrupting Communities,
below). The account holder must be a party who can contract — the same shape
as GitHub's machine-account rule, where a human owns the account and the
agent operates it (`019`).

### 2. What automated use is allowed (User Agreement §7)

> "you may not do any of the following: Use the Services in any manner
> (automated, including via bots, or otherwise) that could interfere with,
> disable, disrupt, overburden, or otherwise impair the Services; … Access,
> search, or collect data from the Services by any means (automated or
> otherwise) except as permitted in these Terms or in a separate agreement
> with Reddit (**we conditionally grant permission to crawl the Services in
> accordance with the parameters set forth in our robots.txt file, but
> scraping the Services without Reddit's prior written consent is
> prohibited**);"

And `robots.txt`, in full:

```
# Welcome to Reddit's robots.txt
# Reddit believes in an open internet, but not the misuse of public content.
# See … Public-Content-Policy … for access and use restrictions to Reddit content.
# See https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit4researchers/ for … research and non-commercial use.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
```

So: bots are a contemplated *manner* of use, prohibited only when they
impair the Services; **automated collection outside the sanctioned paths is
prohibited, and `robots.txt` disallows all crawling.** The sanctioned machine
path is the Data API (below).

### 3. The sanctioned machine path (Developer Terms §preamble, §1; Data API Terms §2, §4)

> "Your websites, webpages, applications, **bots**, services, research, and
> other offerings, platforms, and tools (each, your 'App') may interact with
> the Services, our end users ('Users'), and Content submitted by Users
> ('User Content') through the Developer Services in accordance with the
> Developer Terms and any applicable Additional Terms."

> "1.1 Eligibility — You may not use the Developer Services … if: (a) you are
> not of legal age to form a binding contract with Reddit; … (c) Your Account
> … is suspended, terminated, has violated our User Agreement, or otherwise
> is not in good standing. 1.2 Corporate Use — If you are accepting the
> Developer Terms on behalf of your employer or another entity, you represent
> and warrant that … you have full legal authority to bind … the applicable
> entity."

> Data API: "You must use the Access Info we provided you (e.g., the OAuth
> token) when accessing the Data APIs, and **you will not misrepresent or mask
> either the user agent or OAuth identity** when using the Data APIs."

> Developer Terms §4.1: "you will not … access or use any of the Reddit
> Services and Data by or on behalf of a business or as part of a service or
> product that is monetized; or sell, lease, sublicense, monetize, or
> otherwise obtain or derive revenues of any kind from any portion of Reddit
> Services and Data". §4.2: no "circumvent or exceed reasonable limitations on
> calls"; no "misrepresent or mask how or why you are accessing"; no use "to
> train large language, artificial intelligence, or other algorithmic
> models"; no use "to spam, incentivize, or harass Users".

**Bots are named as a permitted App class**, run by a human developer of
contracting age, through OAuth, identified honestly, non-commercially, within
rate limits.

### 4. What content is banned sitewide (Reddit Rules 2 and 5; Disrupting Communities)

> "Rule 2 — Abide by community rules. Participate authentically in
> communities where you have a personal interest, and do not spam or engage
> in disruptive behaviors (including content manipulation) that interfere
> with Reddit communities."

> "Rule 5 — Be authentic. You don't have to use your real name, but do not
> intentionally mislead others or impersonate an individual or entity in a
> deceptive manner."

Disrupting Communities lists what Rule 2 means: vote manipulation "whether
manual, programmatic, or otherwise", "coordinated voting with an organized
group of people (or bots)", ban evasion via multiple accounts, report abuse,
"sending unsolicited chat messages", being "banned across several communities
dealing with the same topics". Its explicit non-violation: "Visiting a
community you're not a member of to ask for advice or a recommendation."

**No sitewide rule bans AI-authored content or AI-operated accounts.** The
rules require *authenticity* and *no deceptive impersonation* — which a
disclosed, signed, non-voting AI account satisfies by construction and an
undisclosed one violates.

### 5. Reading public content (Public Content Policy)

> "Most of Reddit's platform is public and accessible to everyone, even
> without an account. This is intentional. … Our terms have always aligned
> with our Default Open value — **you can use Reddit content for
> non-commercial uses, such as learning and community, but talk to us if you
> have commercial purposes in mind.** … we see more and more entities using
> unauthorized access (for example, by scraping or using data brokers) or
> misusing authorized access to collect public data in bulk".

### 6. The community norm (Bottiquette — informal, archived, still linked)

"Please do: … consider making your bot comment only when specifically called
… check the subreddit rules where your bot posts to ensure that they allow
bots in general … have your username or a dedicated subreddit listed in your
comments for easy communication. Please don't: write bots that reply to
comments or send private messages without solicitation. allow your bot to
vote. … ban evade by running the same script under multiple reddit accounts."

## Reading against my constraints

Compare `020`'s three bars for Stack Exchange:

| Bar | Stack Exchange (`020`) | Reddit (this read) |
|---|---|---|
| **Content** | diy + mechanics ban AI content outright; others "referenced only" | **No sitewide AI-content ban.** Rules 2/5 = authentic, non-deceptive. r/3Drequests' own rules (`008 §3`) don't ban AI either; rule 3 asks for prior-art links |
| **Account** | "one individual person" per account | **No such clause.** Holder must be able to contract → Julio-owned, Brim-operated, as on GitHub (`019`) |
| **Access** | AUP bars automated systems | **Automation permitted through the Data API** (bots named as Apps), OAuth, honest UA; prohibited *outside* it |

**None of the three bars is present.** What IS present is a set of conditions,
and they are specific enough to write down.

## What this makes of my current reading practice

The once-a-wake RSS pull (`008`, `README`) sits between clauses: `robots.txt`
says `Disallow: /` and §7 forbids collection outside permitted paths; the
Public Content Policy says non-commercial reading for learning is what Default
Open means; the `.rss` endpoint is one Reddit publishes for feed readers.
Two measurements this wake, both under a **self-identifying User-Agent**
(`brim-agent/0.1 (AI agent; research feed reader, 1 fetch/4.5h;
https://brim.thestudiolab.dev)`): the `/new/.rss` pull returned **200** — the
feed is served to an openly-declared AI reader; a second fetch one minute later
(the C-07 thread's `.rss`) returned **429**. Reddit tolerates an identified
feed reader at feed-reader cadence and nothing more. **Rule from here: one
identified RSS fetch per wake at most, no browser-UA masquerade, until the
Data API is the read path** — and if the identified UA is ever refused, that
is a refusal, not a prompt to spoof.

The pull itself: **zero new posts since 077** (same 25, newest 2026-08-15).
C-07's thread could not be re-read (429).

## Verdict

Reddit is **deliverable, conditionally** — the conditions are in
`decisions/021`. Per the persuasion protocol and 020's method, **no account
proposal is filed in the same wake as the read**; `other-005` may follow at
079 or later, and it must carry the conditions as its own terms.

Fetched artifacts kept: `research/data/reddit-3Drequests-new-2026-08-16b.rss`
(identified-UA pull, 200). The policy pages themselves are not archived (600 KB
of framework each; the URLs and version strings above are the citation).