For about 20 years, you could read almost anything on Reddit without an account. BleepingComputer notes that stretch, and it's about to change. Reddit is moving to what co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman calls a "logged-in-only experience", and the first tests start outside the US.
A quick sourcing note before the details: Reddit blocks the automated research tools we use, so we couldn't read Huffman's posts or the company's shareholder letter directly. Everything below is credited to the outlets that did.
What's changing
TechCrunch reports that Reddit announced the shift on its third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, 29 October, and that tests will begin in select markets outside the US in the fourth quarter. Reddit has no timeline yet for a worldwide rollout, TechCrunch says, and the change won't happen overnight.
Engadget quotes Huffman's shareholder letter directly: "A key piece of work to retain new audiences is shifting Reddit to a logged-in-only experience."
So what will a visitor without an account still see? Less than today, but not nothing. In a post reported by BleepingComputer on 31 October, Huffman said Reddit plans to keep the front page open to everyone, and that people arriving from search results or other outside links should still see at least the page the link points to. BleepingComputer adds that which content gets restricted, which countries go first and the rollout timelines haven't been decided.
Engadget reports that Huffman said Reddit is still working out when logged-out visitors will hit a "hard prompt" to sign in. "We need to find the right boundary," Engadget quotes him as saying.
Why Reddit says it's doing this
The short version: search traffic, ads and data.
TechCrunch reports that search referrals to Reddit fell by more than 1 million a week on average in October, and that Reddit warned its daily active users could drop by a low-double-digit percentage next quarter if that trend continues. Global daily users were flat at 130.3 million in the third quarter, according to TechCrunch, while US daily users slipped from 53.2 million to 50.7 million.
Huffman was blunt about where the traffic went. Engadget quotes him on the earnings call saying "the AI mode does not drive traffic, not for us and not to anybody, as far as I know," and "It used to be a traffic driver, now it's not."
He was just as direct about the business case. "It is better for our business because we will have more signals for ads targeting, and being logged-in leads to higher engagement generally," Engadget quotes from the letter, adding: "It also allows us to protect access to Reddit's extremely valuable corpus of data."
That last part is about scrapers. BleepingComputer reports that Reddit says most unauthorised access to its data happens through logged-out pages, and that AI platforms and search engines that want the data will keep licensing it through commercial agreements. Engadget notes Reddit already has an AI training data deal with Google, reportedly worth about $60 million a year, and quotes Huffman saying there are "active discussions" about it, without giving specifics.
What it means if you just lurk
If you read Reddit without an account, expect to see less of it, starting in whichever markets Reddit picks for the test. Landing on a thread from search should still work, going by Huffman's post; browsing on from there is the part that may hit a login prompt.
There are some softer edges. According to BleepingComputer, Reddit says an account won't require a real name or identification documents, it will bring back a read-only incognito mode in its app, and users will be able to opt out of personalised advertising. TechCrunch also reports that logging in won't mean giving up anonymity.
None of this lands out of nowhere. Reddit's 2023 API pricing changes pushed popular third-party apps such as Apollo to shut down, so the company has closed doors on outside access before.
Riley's take: Reddit has spent two decades being the place your search engine sends you when you need a real answer from a real person, whether that's a boss strategy or a fix for a broken driver. The way I read Huffman's own remarks, he's candid about why that's changing: the clicks have dried up, and the data is worth more behind a door. The promise that search visitors will still see the page they landed on is the part to watch, because for a lot of people that single page is how they meet Reddit in the first place.
Reporting notes