Reddit plans to require all visitors to sign in with a registered account to combat web scraping bots and keep human users.
“We will evolve Reddit to be a primarily logged-in experience,” CEO Steve Huffman wrote ahead of the company’s earnings report.
It’s a huge change, considering that Reddit has allowed anyone to visit without an account for the past two decades. The platform’s posts are particularly prevalent in Google search results, but Reddit now joins Facebook, LinkedIn and X by requiring visitors to log in.
Huffman indicated that unauthorized scraping of Reddit pages for AI training was one reason the company mandated logins. “Today, the vast majority of unauthorized access to Reddit (basically the scraping and stealing of Reddit data) happens through our logged-out experiences,” he said.
Although Reddit continues to license its data to third parties, including Google, Huffman signaled that the company needs to crack down on other bad actors who copy Reddit pages without consent. “Without these safeguards and this intent, we cannot control who has access to Reddit data, where things go or what they are used for,” he said.
Earlier this year, the company also began requiring logins on the “Old Reddit” interface and has continued to tighten access ever since. In May, those who frequented Reddit on mobile browsers found their sessions interrupted by pop-ups encouraging them to download (and log in) the official app.
The other driver is how Reddit can provide personalized content and better ad targeting for logged-in users. The same personalization could also help users find interesting forum posts to keep on the platform. “Reddit works best when people participate, set the standards in their communities, and vote to determine what’s good and what’s not. We all benefit when more users have that caring relationship with Reddit,” added Huffman.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Blavity Inc/AfroTech)
The platform plans to test the reported requirement in markets outside the United States in the coming months. “There are still many questions that remain unanswered, especially around where the boundaries should be between logged in and logged out experiences.
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“This is a test, but we will make this transition,” he added in the earnings call.
Still, a focus on personalization could raise concerns about user privacy and potential tracking. However, Huffman says that “when we talk about logging in, we’re literally talking about logging in. We don’t need your name. We don’t need to know who you are. We don’t need to know your identity. Frankly, we don’t want to know. Reddit doesn’t require this (and won’t with this change), and neither do our ads.”
The reported requirement could hurt Reddit’s traffic, but it was already under the growing use of AI to find content. In his shareholder letter, Huffman noted that search referral traffic was “significant in Q3, with the decline accelerating later in the quarter.” In the earnings call, Huffman also cited Google’s growing use of AI insights that place Reddit pages lower in search results.
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I have been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a school and urban reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, covering satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I am currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I have covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories about availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival suppliers such as AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I combed through FCC filings for the latest news and drove to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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