Reddit Will Require You To Log In To Use Old Reddit
6 89An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Reddit will start requiring people to be logged into Reddit to use old.reddit.com. The new requirement will take effect "over the next month," a Reddit employee going by the username boat-botany announced on the social media platform today. The person claimed that the change is part of an ongoing effort to "tighten how automated systems access Reddit."
The Reddit employee wrote: "Old Reddit's logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It's also an important interface for many long-time mods and Redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in."
In a follow-up comment, boat-botany defined abusive behavior as that which violates Reddit's rule prohibiting activity that interferes with the platform's "normal use" or that "create[s] programs or applications" that break Reddit's (controversial) API rules. "By logging in, we get a lot more signal that allows us to detect whether an account is breaking the rules, and then we can block that traffic or enforce those accounts," boat-botany said. Asked why boat-botany scrapes New Reddit less frequently than Old Reddit, the Reddit employee pointed to another commenter's explanation. "[T]he shape of malicious traffic is always changing," the user, Nestramutat, wrote. "It's going to be a constant cat and mouse game[.] As you ban one method, a new one gets developed. It's easy to see abusive traffic in hindsight, but it's harder to pre-emptively block it. Given that they're claiming Old Reddit doesn't have the modern security stack, this is likely proving to be an even greater challenge."
Nestramutat said that the login requirement will add a barrier against threat actors. "You're also now attaching an account ID to every malicious request, plus account creation is only available on New Reddit (with the enhanced security stack)."
As for how long Old Reddit will exist, boat-botany left the door open for its retirement. "We can't promise it will be around forever, but [Reddit CEO Steve Huffman] himself has said we'll keep supporting it while folks are still using it," boat-botany wrote. "That said, it doesn't have the same modern security tech stack reddit.com has, so we need to tighten security on old reddit to keep it viable."
6 comments
Maybe you're the issue? + complaining about porn?? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @03:31PM (#66218784)
Hive mind / echo chamber hell is all Reddit is these days.
I haven't had that experience at all, but I don't do political or racist rants. Reddit is a treasure trove of information for my various hobbies and I learned a lot of extremely specialized knowledge for very specialized interests....plus free porn! I just feel bad for you...a website let's you follow your interests to an intensely specialized and niche degree...AND offers unlimited free boobies and you get upset about their politics? You must be one miserable prick!
As they say "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."
Re:Maybe you're the issue? + complaining about por (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Cyrano de Maniac ( 60961 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @03:49PM (#66218836)
I must 100% agree with this. I've never subscribed to any of various politics, religion, pop culture, or other such subs that are sure to be a cesspool. But I've found great value in homeowner, personal finance, robot lawn mower, retirement (crossing my fingers), tech, hobby, and other special interest subs. The only ones that get crappy with any regularity are the local state/city ones, as political bowels inevitably dump their load there.
They just want to get rid of it (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward ( None ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @03:12PM (#66218754)
old.reddit has less space for enshittification, so they are trying to push users to the new site. They would have long deleted it, but they know that the users who still use old.reddit are the ones contributing the content the other ones merely consume. The new site is for ads and users that are fed an algorithmic feed and the old still exists so the people contributing actual knowledge don't quit.
Risky Business (Score: 5, Interesting)
by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @04:10PM (#66218862)
Reddit isn't wrong about bots but odds are what they really want is your identity. That earns money.
The trouble is people in Saudi Arabia will use old. to read about liberation topics or people in the US will read about drug topics, or whatever the mala prohibita are that will land you in prison for things that are perfectly legal in other jurisdictions.
Even people with accounts who read other subs logged in.
"Just create a new anonymous account" is what people will say who don't understand how identity correlation works. Sure there are ways that 0.0000001% of the population can manage securely, but that's not how this will go down.
The UK just arrested an American attorney who was critical of UK politics and they have multiple people in prison for clicking 'Like'. If you think they won't arrest somebody for reading the wrong sub, give it a few months.
Also, don't connect through Heathrow ever again.
Smells Like Bullshit (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @04:26PM (#66218886)
No anonymous reading of old.reddit. "Cuz bots."
But, they'll still allow anonymous reading of new reddit?
Thai smells like bullshit.
there is one fix and you won't do it (Score: 5, Insightful)
by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) on <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @06:20PM (#66219080)
The fix is to come up with a news reader with cryptographically managed identities (not verified, just consistent) and go back to USENET with it. This does everything valuable that social networking does, but without the malevolent overlord.