www.it-connect.fr
Reddit to Restrict Content to Logged-In Users to Curb Scraping and AI Bots
Do you read Reddit threads without an account after landing from Google? Enjoy it while it lasts, because that may not be the case for much longer. Reddit will gradually reserve 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 an important change to how users access its content. In its shareholder letter, Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of the platform, said Reddit would move to a "logged-in-only" experience, meaning access would be reserved for signed-in users. He expanded on the plan that same day in a post on his Reddit profile titled About that login screen. As a reminder, for the past twenty years or so, it has been possible to browse nearly 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 which countries will be involved, which content will be locked down, or the timeline for the worldwide rollout. Will France be part of the first wave? I don’t know at this stage.
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 must remain viewable without signing in.
- External links: a visitor arriving from a search engine or another site must be able to read the page the link points to.
- No ID: Reddit says it will not ask for a real name or 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 a login will be required there; otherwise, what would be the point?
Scraping in the crosshairs, but not only that
Reddit is highlighting the fight against data scraping. "The vast majority of unauthorized access to Reddit (basically scraping and theft of Reddit data) goes through our logged-out experiences," Steve Huffman explains, without providing any figures. AI companies and search engines will, for their part, have to go through licensing agreements.
This move adds to other restrictions: Reddit’s RSS feeds will be shut down on November 13, 2026 (sadly), and the public API is set to be closed by March 2027.
But the issue is also economic: according to the shareholder letter, requiring users to sign in will provide 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 averaged 76.8 million logged-out daily active users, compared with 53.5 million logged-in users. The goal would therefore be to reverse that 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. As a reminder, 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 draw a direct connection, but one can be seen.
Will a login wall be enough?
Technically, requiring sign-in makes life harder for bots: every request is tied to an account that can be rate-limited or banned. Accepting the terms of service at signup also strengthens Reddit’s legal position. But a determined actor can still create large numbers of accounts, rotate residential proxies, and automate authentication. The cost of scraping Reddit goes up, but the problem does not disappear entirely.
As often happens, this kind of measure also penalizes, and especially so, legitimate users of the platform in question — in this case, Reddit. But beyond scraping, this decision seems above all tied to economic concerns around advertising.
What do you think?
