Reddit will force everyone to log in
www.theverge.com
Will you sign up for an account?

Reddit is announcing a huge shift: It’s going to start requiring users to log in.

Right now, you can browse Reddit without having an account…

Huffman claims the login requirement is better for Reddit’s user experience and its ads business and is “more protective of Reddit data.” The “vast majority” of unauthorized Reddit access happens “through our logged-out experiences,” though the company will still strike licensing deals of its data with companies, like the deals it made with OpenAI and Google in 2024.

Source [web-archived; 2026-10-29_20-16-09Z]

Related: https://www.theverge.com/tech/1002788/old-reddit-ai-scraping (…cut back access to ‘Old Reddit’ because of AI bots…)

  • Schwim Dandy@piefed.zipEnglish
    69·
    9 days ago

    I would like to be the first to thank them for this move. It’s going to do wonderful things for the Fediverse.

    • Helix 🧬@feddit.orgEnglish
      13·
      9 days ago

      Yeah maybe we get ads and investors and bots aswell! I’m glad we rely on unpaid labor to fix all this! /s

      • trojanbark@lemmy.world
        15·
        9 days ago

        Nobody is being forced to code the platform or host an instance. Most who do it are doing it out of love or genuine interest or passion or whatever else

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          3·
          9 days ago

          They still have real lives in the real world and their own things happening, and need sleep, relaxation, recreation, family time.

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
              2·
              9 days ago

              I’m not suggesting it does. Lemmy will need more help, financially and “for the love,” on the influx.

        • Helix 🧬@feddit.orgEnglish
          3·
          9 days ago

          Yeah, and people will burn out from this, as have countless reddit mods. All the while commercial Fediverse instances might take over.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      If you mean ex-Reddit users, even if they were pissed off enough to leave Reddit (they never will be) and knew about Lemmy (they don’t), there’s no guarantee they would switch (to a normie, anything not made by a multi-million dollar company is “sketchy”)

      If you mean fewer Reddit screenshots… eh, I also don’t think that would be an improvement honestly

  • Travl_Techugle@feddit.dk
    16·
    9 days ago

    In the app, it seems the option to login using username and password is gone. Now you have to use a confirmed e-mail address. In the browser it seems like the username + password still logs in fine.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    9 days ago

    So they are basically going to turn Reddit into discord and hide content from users coming from search?

    Or are they going to turn it into quora and only let you see a single post from search?

    I don’t see either of these options being good for reddits long term user acquisition, but maybe their strategy is to just milk their current data dry and then bounce

    • FoxAlive@lemmy.zip
      10·
      9 days ago

      Discord is actually pivoting to allowing google searches to public servers. So they are flipflopping.