Overview
- Reddit announced the change in a shareholder letter and public posts on October 29, and said it will begin testing a primarily logged-in experience in select markets outside the United States in the coming months.
- The company says most unauthorized scraping happens through logged-out pages and that forcing logins will make mass scraping harder while allowing Reddit to control how its posts are accessed and licensed.
- Reddit reported that search referrals dropped by more than 1 million per week in October, a decline it links to AI-driven search features and that it says threatens casual, logged-out traffic that once fed growth.
- The company will keep some access options under consideration: the front page and content reached from search results or shared links are expected to remain viewable without an account, and a read-only incognito app mode will be re-released.
- The move builds on years of changes — including 2023 API pricing updates, lawsuits over scraping, and commercial licensing deals with AI firms — and could make discovery harder for casual searchers, researchers and moderators while tightening Reddit’s ad monetization and data-control strategy.