Be careful posting on Reddit: Cult of Mac may take your content!

There’s lot of news about Reddit selling their content to various companies, particularly for AI, but not, that I’m aware, to Cult of Mac, an Apple news site.

But Cult of Mac are using it anyway.

Oh, and then adding their own affiliate links on top of other people’s content, and all without telling them about it.

Here’s my original post on Reddit – if you click into it, there’s a further breakdown that I give in the comments. This was on January 17th of this year.

My small home office set-up
byu/dartiss inmacsetups

2 days later, Cult of Mac published this article. Within the content, they breakdown the same office content as I do, but add in their own affiliate links for the products.

‘Small’ MacBook Pro rig punches well above its weight [Setups]

If that wasn’t enough, in July, they published a follow-up, zoning in on the microphone specifics of my office. Both articles are written by David Snow.

Here’s a good way to mount your USB microphone [Setups]

I mean, I’d be flattered if they’d approached me first, but they didn’t. They’ve literally copy and pasted my images and my content from Reddit onto their site and monetised it.

I contacted both Cult of Mac and Reddit about this but never heard back (in the case of Reddit, I asked them to confirm if they had an agreement in place allowing for this). I’m not going to attempt any kind of takedown request as the content was not from my own site. However, I feel that unless there is an agreement in place with Reddit to specifically allow this, that there is a moral question over ownership here, especially if you’re going to make money from it.

August 6 Update

2 days after posting this I heard back from Reddit…

Reddit users own their content, so we are unable to give any sort of blanket permission for use. As we are not affiliated with that website, you’ll want to reach out to them for further information.