The days of browsing Reddit without an account are coming to an end. In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrote that the platform is shifting to “a logged-in-only experience” to retain new audiences. Reddit will first test the change in markets outside the US.
It is not yet clear whether the change will be implemented globally. Huffman also did not say what the platform will look like for people without an account. Old Reddit is still available, but it requires a login too.
According to Huffman, a primarily logged-in platform will give users “the best Reddit experience possible” and help them find the most relevant content and communities. He added that the move is better for the business, as it should lead to higher engagement and advertising opportunities.
Logging in would also allow Reddit to “protect access to Reddit’s extremely valuable corpus of data,” wrote Huffman. Reddit has been fighting AI companies over data scraping. Last year, it accused Perplexity and three other AI companies of stealing its data by scraping Google search results that included its content.
Many users reacted negatively to the news. One Redditor said they stopped using Twitter after it forced everyone to log in. If you use social platforms, it is worth checking which data you share once an account becomes mandatory.
