Reddit Signals Changes to 21-Year-Old Old Reddit as Login Rule Targets Scraping
Updated
Updated · Ars Technica · Aug 5
Reddit Signals Changes to 21-Year-Old Old Reddit as Login Rule Targets Scraping
3 articles · Updated · Ars Technica · Aug 5
Summary
Reddit said Old Reddit will face further changes after imposing a late-July login requirement, but declined to say whether the 21-year-old site will be shut down.
The company said the legacy desktop experience has become a major source of abusive scraping, automated traffic and spamming, making logged-in access a near-term safeguard.
Reddit also plans to move critical bots and moderator workflows onto its modern stack, framing that migration as a way to curb bad behavior while it works out next steps.
The announcement extends Reddit's broader push to tighten control over access and automation as it battles AI scraping and steers users and tools toward newer infrastructure.