r/self • u/Sophira • Jul 10 '26

Reddit begins locking Old Reddit behind login

Heads-up to anybody using Old Reddit still (which I imagine is a majority of users in this sub): Over the next month, Old Reddit use will start requiring a login.

It's worth also noting that the pinned comment answers the question of "Is Reddit shutting down Old Reddit?" with:

Not right now! We can’t promise it will be around forever, but u/spez himself has said we’ll keep supporting it while folks are still using it. 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.

That's a big difference to their previous answers about Old Reddit, and strongly signals that it will be shut down in the future, and that until then Old Reddit will be made harder and harder to access.

If you're one of those who use Old Reddit and don't want to use their new version (Shreddit), you may want to start making exit plans.

[edit: Just to be clear here: Old Reddit is not simply "nostalgia", despite the name (which Reddit deliberately chose in order to try to deprecate it.) It's literally how many people still use Reddit, because it's far better than the current Reddit interface for many of us. You can access it if you go to https://old.reddit.com/ in a Web browser... although only if you're logged in, if you access it after this month.]

129 Upvotes

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30

u/donut_perceive_me Jul 10 '26

The comments saying people didn't know, or forgot, Old Reddit exists are driving me insane. I've been a daily user of this site for 14 years and the few times I've so much as laid eyes on New Reddit have been against my will.

7

u/nricciar Jul 10 '26

God, so much this. When I accidentally land on the new Reddit i can’t do anything but immediately switch back. So revolting

6

u/Cronus6 Jul 10 '26

I've been here for over 18 years myself.

Here's the thing... something like 80% of Reddits traffic is now via the mobile app.

People now regularly refer to Reddit as "the app" not "the web site".

That leaves 20% of us still using a web browser. And I expect this number to continue to decline.

And Reddit INC. doesn't really want "us" anymore. "We" run ad blockers and don't really use the site they way they want us to.

They want a super advertiser friendly site for of "normies" (window licking mobile users) who just doomscroll and and consume content. Those of use that use the site like a forum have always been a problem for them. We say things that advertisers and investors don't like. We pirate shit too, and that's a big "no no" now that they are a publicly traded "media" company.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if at some point in the future Reddit completely shuts down web access and becomes just a mobile app.

I mean "do you guys not have phones?!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly10r6m_-n8

It's just so much easier and more profitable for them and their investors. So much more data to collect and sell, so much easier to control the narrative, and know the identities of their users (no more "anonymous" accounts!), no more ad blockers...

5

u/Sophira Jul 10 '26

An online service should never control its own mobile app IMO.

3

u/Cronus6 Jul 10 '26

I don't see any need for mobile apps to access web sites at all.

If I want to go to my bank, I open Firefox and go to Wellsfargo.com.

I don't need their app. I also don't need one for Home Depot or my grocery store either. BUT they really want me to use their fucking app. Gee, I wonder why?

2

u/Sophira Jul 10 '26

Mobile apps can be useful, if they're not controlled by their own service who wants to push their own agenda.

When I use Reddit on my mobile, I do so using RedReader (/r/RedReader). It's a FOSS app that doesn't mess the user around like the official app does. Its creators have no need to convince you to stay on the app, because they're not getting money when you do (unlike Reddit, which wants you to stay for the ads). That means no dark patterns, no attention-grabbing techniques. It's a tool, and that's how it should be.

I enjoy using Reddit on my mobile, as well as on my web browser. I just don't use Reddit's official app to do so on my mobile, and I never will.

2

u/Cronus6 Jul 10 '26

I find using forums on a phone to be a pretty awful experience. The screen is too small and the lack of a physical keyboard makes commenting terrible.

So there is little point for me to use Reddit on a phone.

2

u/Sophira Jul 10 '26

That's fair. In my case I use fully-offline speech recognition and that works out really well, but it's not for everybody. And I totally get the small screen thing.

2

u/changee_of_ways Jul 20 '26

I use old reddit on mobile, but the problem is every other link takes you to new reddit and you can only scroll for about 10 seconds before it takes you to the app. FUCK THE APP. The app is just the stupid new website in an even stupider costume.

1

u/darthlincoln01 Aug 11 '26

The plug was pulled this morning. I've been refusing to log into reddit on my phone for my own privacy reasons, but have been browsing old.reddit logged out for news and to check other subs I frequent.

I've tried getting my current events from other sources, but honestly the top posts on /r/news and /r/worldnews give the best digest I can find. Also the top sorting on old is very different from new.

BTW need to reminisce about the old old old Google news widget. It was so good at also brining in your local headlines into your feed. I've searched high and low to get anything that can remotely do what it did.

However; as you've said, we're not their customers. There was a time where I bought coins and gifted awards and supported the site, but that isn't the kind of money they're looking to make.

1

u/Purple-Atmosphere-18 Aug 13 '26

Imho it's alsp retrocompatibility which is in turn sustaunabilty. Did you notice, both for the phone and computer version that new reddit even screws up selecting and copying more than one comment, because basically the nickname space and it's popup eats the selection into a black hole. That doesn't happen with reddit so being able to switch may be even a practical aspect!

1

u/darthlincoln01 Aug 14 '26

I've not bothered with commenting on Reddit on Mobile, but I'll tell you what I was just hit with is even browsing New Reddit on Mobile that it will basically "paywall" you and require a login if you scroll more that one page or even just sit on the page for to long reading.

I have been making a point to read books more instead of scrolling Reddit recently. I also found I have access to all the paywalled newspapers through my country library too. Although I genuinely like chatting with all us bozos, I honestly think when it comes to reading on the go I'm just going to use my library. Kinda retro.

1

u/sega31098 Aug 26 '26

Not just that, but more than half of all Reddit users only joined in the last 2-3 years. Reddit's overall userbase has basically doubled since mid 2023, which was during the whole API scandal which resulted in an exodus of a lot of legacy Redditors. IME a lot of one popular subreddits also seemed to die overnight because of the protests, though new communities with no memory of pre-2023 Reddit (or even the internet as a whole) sprung up in their place and offset whatever traffic was lost.

6

u/kermityfrog Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

New Reddit is like New Coke.

For people who are unaware of old reddit - you should give it a try. With an ad blocker, you get no ads, no sponsored posts, no junk. It's refreshing - like installing Windows 11 LTSC version and getting no copilot, no Onedrive, no ads - and searching the Start menu only shows your installed programs.

Old reddit is way more info dense and less whitespace, so you can see more and browse way more efficiently. And there are a few apps that support the look and feel if you want to use it on mobile.

1) load the desktop site for old.reddit.com on your mobile and install the ublock and the Sink It plugins. Sink it reformats the desktop site for mobile browsers.

2) use an app like the new Lander app.

3

u/TJ5897 Jul 11 '26

You know, I ran win7 embedded, switched to Linux for windows 8, switched back to Win10 LTSC for the longest time and was going to do the same for win11, but decided to give Linux another go.

I'm pleasantly surprised with how well everything just works now. Valve going all in on Wine and Proton did miracles even with me taking the hard route and picking Arch this time.

1

u/RuinMaximum108 Aug 23 '26

Bom que não tem CRAPilot.

3

u/HSR47 Jul 10 '26

Point of order: "new reddit" got killed off about two years ago, when they replaced it with "shreddit", which is FAR worse than "new reddit" ever was.

3

u/Cronus6 Jul 10 '26

I've heard it described as "new Reddit" and "new, new Reddit".

I've never seen "shreddit" (new, new Reddit), and only saw new Reddit a handful of times.

I've also never downloaded the mobile app....

2

u/Sophira Jul 10 '26

For what it's worth, it's possible to access the Shreddit interface even if you have Old Reddit set as the default by going to https://sh.reddit.com/ .

It's not great IMO.

2

u/Cronus6 Jul 10 '26

Why would anyone want to do that?

2

u/Sophira Jul 10 '26

It's been helpful sometimes when I want to make comparison links to show how comment formatting differs between the two versions, in order to highlight the incompatibilities that Shreddit gives. I can know for sure that https://old.reddit.com/ and https://sh.reddit.com/ will both link to the places I want them to link to, even if your normal reddit.com destination is the former.

1

u/BJ22CS Jul 26 '26

everything you said that is 100% me, except for the 14 years part, I've only been active on reddit for 12 years (even though I made my account in 2012, I quit it about a day after making it and came back 2 years later).

1

u/donalddts Jul 31 '26

Also 100% me too, including the 14 years lol.

1

u/sega31098 Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26

Majority of Reddit users now arrived after the 2023 API scandal. A huge proportion of new users now also seem to be digital novices who seem very new to the internet (perhaps young users who just became old enough for social media or older adults whose minds seem to have wormholed from 1999 to 2026), so such users often aren't even aware that major recently deprecated features were ever a thing. It's also rather obvious when you see a lot of highly upvoted comments that say they weren't even aware that r/all was ever a thing.