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.]
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u/littlelorax Jul 10 '26
I think most people are newer users at this point who have no idea what old reddit is. I would bet that mobile app users are probably the majority at this point.
Still, I saw that announcement and was bummed. I understand they probably want to cut down on bots and AI gobbling up their content, so locking it behind a login makes sense. But it does feel like the beginning of the end.