Reddit says it has to cut back access to ‘Old Reddit’ because of AI bots

is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.

Reddit is further limiting who can use the “Old Reddit” experience as part of its efforts to combat scraping and automated traffic. Reddit recently started forcing users to log in to be able to use Old Reddit, but in the “next few months,” the company says that you’ll have to be logged in and have used Old Reddit in the six months from when the change rolls out to be able to continue browsing the platform with the classic experience.

Reddit says the six-month window covers “the vast majority of all Old Reddit users.” The announcement didn’t go into detail, but it’s clearly aimed at blocking not just new account creation for bots, but also any bots that might access unused or abandoned accounts. As part of the changes, Reddit will stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13th because RSS is “now a common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse,” and suggested replacements like Discord Relay for moderation help.

Reddit:

If you use RSS for feeds outside of a community you moderate, there is no replacement. We know RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we’re grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit.

The company has been waging war against unsanctioned access to its data for some time, including blocking the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to prevent AI scraping, suing Anthropic over alleged unauthorized bot access, and striking deals with Google and OpenAI to use Reddit data for training. Reddit knows that Old Reddit is beloved by many users, and in May of 2025, CEO Steve Huffman said the company would “keep it online as long as people are using it.” But in August, Huffman said that Reddit had gotten to a point where “we need to make some changes” because the experience was being used by “everyone who spams, scrapes, or does anything bad on Reddit.”

In its announcement today, Reddit said that the recent login requirement for Old Reddit “helped reduce scraping and automated abuse” but “still allowed any logged-in account to access Old Reddit, including accounts with no prior Old Reddit use.” Logged-in moderators, however, will still be able to use Old Reddit without a recent usage requirement.

Reddit also shared updates for the previously-announced transition moving apps and bots that use Reddit’s public data API to the company’s Developer Platform. Reddit will begin removing API access for users that haven’t registered their apps by January 12th, and all remaining public API access “will end in March 2027.”

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