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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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Mildly Infuriating
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They don't even try to lie effectively. Why in Hell's name would you need to log in to "keep reddit safe" just to lurk?
Easier to track users and produce verifiable "x potential viewers " to present to advertisers.
They've wanted to kill old.reddit for a while. It doesn't support advertisers or tracking the way they want. Also RES is still a thing on it. They're too chickenshit to do so though, since the actual content generators and knowledgebase still use it. This is another attempt to slip the noose tighter
My only guess is because they want to force AI scrapers to pay for access. And most scrapers probably work best on old.reddit because they keep changing new Reddit’s layout. As a programmer, if you’re going to code something to access a site, (and you don’t want to constantly have to rework it every time they make a small UI update) you’re going to use the version that never changes. So by forcing them to log in, it makes tracking the individual users (and thus, identifying potential unauthorized scraper accounts) easier.
But can't you use very simple agentic AI to constantly update the code for web scrapers on new reddit? From what I understand that is the kind of coding LLM can do well and you can just unit test for errors and feed it back to the LLM until it works. Even requiring accounts, creation can be automated using LLMs too.
This sounds like it a loosing proposition and will only piss off hardcore users. Not that this would stop them. But I don't think protection from web scrapers is a good explanation. Probably it's just enshittification, forcing users to use their new interface to optimize business metrics. Someone is going to get a bonus because they improved the short sighted metrics.
New reddit is really weird, it's all html (even pagination/apis) with no clear consistent structure.
The mobile apis are easier to scrape
CPMs are better if traffic is not bots. Same at my company we have to use cloudflare. They essentially don't know who is human and who is OpenClaw anymore or scraper.
It's up to you on whether you believe it or not. But the reasons they're giving are that they've got protections going on when you access new Reddit that they aren't able to implement on Old Reddit. Again, this is coming from the announcement from the Reddit admins. It sounds plausible to me and I really don't care to argue this. I'm just passing along what they actually said.
Protections from.. users reading text?
Not users - people/bots with malicious intent against the site.
Malicious intent to sell the free content that reddit sells? The only thing this is protecting is profits. They're just pulling up the ladder, that's all.
Exactly. That's why I mentioned lurking. I haven't participated in reddit for quite awhile, not after getting permabanned for dubious reasons. But I'll still lurk, especially on some of the niche community subreddits. I also cannot fathom what someone just reading text might need protection from. I can certainly see it for commenting, but you've always had to be logged in to do that anyway.
It's to stop automated scrapping. Old reddit has less/little/no protections from that. New reddit has a lot more in place. So when you log in (which now you can only make an account with new reddit), it tracks a lot more information so it's more difficult to get around bans. Basically stops the majority of automated scraping, which reddit doesn't want.
tHe ChIldREn
I second some_kind_of_guy's comment. What exactly do you need protection from while just lurking?
Not users - people/bots with malicious intent against the site.