Reddit signals ominous upcoming "changes” for

What happened

com’s days appear to be numbered. In a blog post today, Reddit made a vague statement about upcoming “changes” to Old Reddit: In late July, Reddit started requiring people to log in to Reddit in order to use Old Reddit. ” Today’s blog post further claimed that Old Reddit is leading to unwarranted content scraping.

The Verge reported today that developers who wish to make a third-party Reddit mobile app will continue having to ask Reddit for API access, and that Reddit hasn’t set a date for when all apps will have to be on the Developer Platform. ” Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.

Why it matters

“These changes will strengthen Reddit’s foundation, ensure the platform is ready to support thriving communities for future generations, and preserve what makes Reddit uniquely human,” the blog says. Ars Technica asked Reddit what specifically it means by “changes,” and company spokesperson Rosa Kim said the company is “exploring different options” without providing specifics.

What to watch

She added: This follows June comments from a Reddit employee about Old Reddit, stating, “we can’t promise it will be around forever” while noting CEO Steve Huffman’s earlier promises to keep supporting the site while people still use it.

Additional previous attempts that Reddit has made at fighting unauthorized scraping have included suing Perplexity, Anthropic, and others, blocking the Internet Archive, and restricting crawler access for search engines it doesn’t have a deal with. “We envision a future where all good, trusted automation on Reddit runs within an ecosystem that allows us to offer support and enforce our policies consistently,” Reddit’s blog said about the API changes.