Reddit forces logins to stop scraping; critics say the content's already been sold
nptacek · x · 2026-11-02
Reddit is removing logged-out browsing, requiring everyone to sign in — officially to block scraping. A viral rebuttal argues the site's anti-business user culture made ads unprofitable, its real revenue now comes from licensing content to AI labs, and since labs have already scraped everything, the login wall only kills SEO traffic ("question + reddit" searches) and usage. "End of an era," as the quoted post puts it.
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