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Reddit Is Moving Toward a Logged-In-Only Experience to Stop Scraping and AI Data Harvesting
Reading Reddit threads without an account after coming from Google? Enjoy it while it lasts, because that may not be possible for much longer. Reddit is gradually reserving its content for logged-in users in an effort to stop bots from scraping its data. Here’s what we know.
On October 29, 2026, alongside the release of its quarterly earnings, Reddit officially announced a major change to how users access its content. In its shareholder letter, Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of the platform, said Reddit will move to a "logged-in-only" experience, meaning it will be reserved for signed-in users. He explained the approach the same day in a post published on his Reddit profile, titled About that login screen. For the record, for about twenty years it has been possible to browse almost all of Reddit without creating an account.
Tests will begin in the fourth quarter of 2026 in certain countries outside the United States. Their results will be used to define the global version of this new content-access strategy. However, Reddit has not specified the list of affected countries, the content that will be locked down, or the rollout timeline for the global deployment. Will France be part of the first wave? I don’t know yet.
What Will Still Be Accessible Without an Account
With or without an account, what will actually be restricted? Here are the main commitments made by Reddit:
- The homepage: it should remain viewable without being signed in.
- External links: a visitor arriving from a search engine or another site should be able to read the page the link points to.
- No ID required: Reddit says it will not ask for a real name or an identity document. A simple user account will be enough.
- Incognito mode: a rebuilt, read-only mode will return to the mobile app.
But what happens when that visitor wants to scroll through a long comment thread or open another discussion? Reddit does not say. There is a good chance that logging in will be required there, otherwise what would be the point?
Scraping in the Crosshairs, But Not Only That
Reddit is highlighting its fight against data scraping. "The vast majority of unauthorized access to Reddit (basically Reddit scraping and data theft) comes through our logged-out experiences," Steve Huffman explains, without providing a figure. AI companies and search engines will, in turn, need to go through licensing agreements.
This effort comes on top of other restrictions: Reddit’s RSS feeds will be shut down on November 13, 2026 (sadly), and the public API is due to close by March 2027.
But the issue is also economic: according to the shareholder letter, being logged in provides more signals for ad targeting. Logged-in users and app users generate more than 80% of monetization. And there is an interesting figure: in the third quarter, Reddit had an average of 76.8 million logged-out daily active users, compared with 53.5 million logged-in users. The goal would therefore be to reverse the trend. At the same time, traffic from search engines is declining, with more than one million visits lost per week on average in October (because of Google AI Overviews? Probably), especially on the logged-out side.
Steve Huffman also mentions adapting to "emerging regulations" around the world, without naming them. For reference, I published an article about Reddit being designated a Very Large Online Platform under the DSA by the European Commission at the end of August 2026. Reddit does not make the connection directly, but one can be drawn.
Will a Login Wall Be Enough?
Technically, logging in makes life harder for bots: each request is tied to an account that can be rate-limited or banned. Accepting the terms of service during registration also strengthens Reddit’s legal position. But a determined actor can create accounts in bulk, rotate residential proxies, and automate authentication. The cost goes up to achieve scraping on Reddit, but the problem does not disappear entirely.
As often happens, this kind of measure also penalizes (and especially so) those who use the targeted platform legitimately, in this case Reddit. But beyond scraping, this decision seems to be mainly tied to economic issues related to advertising.
What do you think?
