Reddit locks down old.reddit

AI & tech · Heat 6.8 / 10 · 2 shows · 15m airtime

On October 2, Reddit restricted old.reddit.com to users who are logged in and have used the interface within the last six months, and discontinued its RSS feeds, citing bot scraping. By October 30, Reddit said search traffic had dropped by more than 1 million referrals per week on average that month. Huffman has since said the company isn't counting on Google traffic returning, which reframes the loss as accepted rather than reversed. What the change means for third-party clients and archival access remains open.

How 2 podcasts covered it

1. The Vergecast, 2026-10-02 (1:17:15 to 1:21:30)
   Discusses Reddit's old.reddit lockdown
   The hosts discuss Reddit restricting old.reddit.com to logged-in users active in the last six months and dropping RSS feeds, framing it as an anti-bot move and joking about agents like Muse scraping the site.
   New angle: Reddit will require users to be logged in and to have used old.reddit.com within the last six months, and will stop supporting its RSS feeds.
2. The Vergecast, 2026-10-30 (50:36 to 59:45)
   Reads the shareholder letter on lost referrals
   Reads from Reddit's shareholder letter to explain the login push: search referral traffic fell meaningfully in Q3 and kept falling into October, with more than a million referrals lost per week. Frames it as Google's AI Overviews killing the supply chain that feeds it.
   New angle: Reddit says search traffic dropped by more than 1 million referrals per week on average in October.
3. TBPN, 2026-10-30 (26:41 to 27:48)
   Reads Huffman's quotes on Google traffic
   Picks up the selloff after Reddit's earnings call and reads the quotes: Google crawls Reddit as hard as ever but AI mode does not drive traffic, and Huffman says the company isn't counting on Google traffic returning. Ties it back to the login-only move.
   New angle: Huffman says Reddit isn't counting on Google traffic returning.