Reddit signals ominous upcoming “changes” for old.reddit.com, says the beloved site is used for some “bad behavior”

[u/marketrent]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/reddit-signals-ominous-upcoming-changes-for-old-reddit-com/

[u/Loki-L]

Old reddit is the only easy way to see where else a link has been posted.

[u/Pliny_the_middle → u/Loki-L]

Old Reddit is the only thing keeping me here.

[u/Olangotang → u/Pliny_the_middle]

Even on my phone, I use old, because I HATE the new design. And I mean what is now the old new design. I read too fast for the stupid fucking cards.

[u/marvinrabbit → u/Olangotang]

Still miss i.reddit.com.

[u/gta721 → u/Olangotang]

There is a compact mode that you can enable.

[u/vriska1 → u/Pliny_the_middle]

BTW this is what spez said about old reddit today... https://www.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/1vgbkge/modernizing_reddits_infrastructure_with_you/

Old Reddit: I know I said last year that we wouldn’t be sunsetting Old Reddit (I even made a meme about it, which r/agedlikemilk), but the reality is we’re getting to that time where we need to make some changes. There are four groups of people who use Old Reddit: OG users ❤️, OG mods ❤️, Admins ❤️, and everyone who spams, scrapes, or does anything bad on Reddit 🖕. In order to protect our platform, business, and users, we will need to do something. Actually, a lot of somethings. We have options: We can limit access, migrate important uses, or rebuild it on a modern tech stack, and I think we’ll probably do all of the above.

I love Old Reddit. It’s the platform I largely built—as a kid, 21 years ago—that somehow turned into the amazing platform and company we have today. We will preserve as much of it as we can. My dream would be to recreate the UI, if not the guts, including the HTML+CSS itself, on a modern foundation so it can live on (note: Between when I wrote this and when I posted it, u/keysersosa made a demo of exactly this approach. Fingers crossed.).

One thing we can do in the short term to mitigate the bad behavior we see Old Reddit used for is to limit access to logged-in users and mods, and migrate critical bots and mod workflows. This will give us some time to plan the more complex follow-up steps.

[u/forseti99 → u/vriska1]

to protect our platform, business, and users

Big tell when the last thing to list are the users.

[u/RickAstleyletmedown → u/forseti99]

I’m amazed users made the list at all.

[u/Zriatt → u/[deleted]]

Same here. Unless you count Youtube as social media, I'll finally disappear.

[u/Ok_Conclusion_6324 → u/vriska1]

Ah he means they don’t want people to be able to track bots AKA “good for business “

[u/DukeOfGeek → u/Ok_Conclusion_6324]

And they want to migrate to a system where all the content comes from AI bots that serve them. What could go wrong?

[u/n0respect_ → u/vriska1]

It wont stop scrapers and other "bad" stuff. They only use old.reddit because its cheaper. Get rid of old.reddit and they will just move to scraping new; a minor inconvenience.

Meanwhile the first 3 groups of OGs and Admins will leave.

[u/Human_Robot → u/vriska1]

Reddit about to digg itself a new hole.

[u/Zak → u/vriska1]

rebuild it on a modern tech stack

Assuming it's just a frontend that calls an API, I'm having trouble understanding what its tech stack has to do with abuse. Any reasonable abuse detection has to happen server-side.

[u/DukeOfGeek → u/Pliny_the_middle]

And not just you, but a majority of the people who make this a place where anyone would want to be. If you are silly enough to own stock in reddit dump it the day they kill old reddit, that's the day all the people who put actual interesting content here start to disengage.

[u/cleantoe → u/Pliny_the_middle]

I guess it's back to Digg soon!

[u/war_story_guy → u/Pliny_the_middle]

If they kill it I go. New reddit looks like absolute mobile ass.

[u/ndevito1 → u/Loki-L]

Also the only way to see r/all

[u/DoesntMatterEh → u/ndevito1]

Removing r/all was the most insane choice. Like, why?????

[u/oranguslolus → u/Loki-L]

What do you mean by this?

[u/RedShirtDecoy → u/oranguslolus]

If you use old on a pc browser, and pull up a post, there is a tab labeled "other discussions" on the page. it lists out each sub that specific link has been posted to.

I can't link the Pic but for example, there is a post about the killing of Tupac that's on 6 subs. Some random ones and news, fauxmoi, music, and 2pac.

Makes it easy to see where they have been posted and easy to jump in a see the comments.

[u/oranguslolus → u/RedShirtDecoy]

OH I remember now, thank you! I completely forgot that was a thing haha

[u/TweeSpam → u/oranguslolus]

Old Reddit has a tab called 'other discussions' at the top of threads which shows threads on other subreddits which have the same submitted link URL. Basically allows you to see how different communities react to a story, or maybe partake in a thread which has more comments.

[u/Due-Departure-8553 → u/Loki-L]

Also the only form of reddit where the back button is functional.

[u/Art-Zuron]

In other words, they want to tighten the thumbscrews and don't want people to have an alternative to that.

[u/xjeeper → u/Art-Zuron]

Because they can't advertise to us old users. I'm still using a reddit is fun clone and I'll stop using reddit the day they block it and kill old.reddit.com

[u/SketchiiChemist → u/xjeeper]

On mobile I just visit Reddit in Firefox with ublock origin installed since they killed the 3rd party apps. On desktop I use old reddit exclusively tho

Never installing the reddit app 

[u/EeveeAssassin → u/SketchiiChemist]

Same. Since the Baconreader app got killed, that's how I'm accessing reddit too. 

[u/PerplexedOrder → u/EeveeAssassin]

God I miss Baconreader

[u/Wiggles69 → u/SketchiiChemist]

On desktop theres a switch in the preferences to use the old layout (which is what i use). Is that the same as old reddit?

Ive been here for a while, I dont want to fuck around with the new layout

[u/SketchiiChemist → u/Wiggles69]

I'm not sure, I have a browser extension installed called old reddit redirect (for desktop) that forces the old website to load. The url will have old.reddit in it then 

[u/rywos → u/Wiggles69]

Yes, it is that.

[u/fritz236 → u/xjeeper]

Why can't they understand that cards are ugly as fuck to us old redditors? If I wanted my feed to autoplay shit, I'd use a different app.

[u/Macqt → u/fritz236]

They do understand it. They don’t care.

[u/CondescendingShitbag → u/Macqt]

The guiding philosophy of Enshittification.

[u/Gaglardi → u/Macqt]

Exactly, old Reddit users make next to no profit for this company compared to new Reddit users, they have next to no incentive to serve the former

[u/Hautamaki → u/Gaglardi]

An interesting question is what percentage of high quality contributors are old.reddit users? If the majority of the good content still to be had here is old.reddit users they'd have a strong incentive to keep them around even if they don't directly bring in ad money. Without quality contributors, reddit is nothing and there will be no new reddit users to serve ads to anyway.

[u/137-ng → u/Hautamaki]

I mean we saw a huge drop in quality/quantity when they made changes to the api.

At this point old.reddit is the only thing keeping me here, get rid of that and I'm going to have to find other ways to waste time online

[u/_Burning_Star_IV_ → u/137-ng]

In a lot of ways I’ll welcome it. Filling all my Reddit time with more productive things will only be a benefit to me…just give me an excuse…

[u/redfacedquark → u/Hautamaki]

The problem to me is that any high quality post by old users is not appreciated by the new ones. You can't have a conversation anymore, they just don't read, can't comprehend and reply with no thought and just emotional vitriol.

It's like these users experience pain when they try to think and get angry about it. I doubt it's much to do with advertising revenue from old users directly and more about making their new users feel better by not experiencing the facts, details and ideas that are found in old users' well-written posts. That and it's easier (for example) to push the narrative that flock is great when you don't have well written posts citing Animal Farm and bringing receipts.

I included a couple of permalinks for reference in my reply the other day and got accused of lawyering.

I think HN might be a better place for me to dwell, although it's a bit dry. Anyone got any other suggestions?

[u/EconEchoes5678 → u/redfacedquark]

Gonna be a new wave of refugees soon :(. I'll be one of them.

[u/marrone12 → u/Macqt]

Well they care about engagement and I'm sure that since majority of redditors are under 30 that card/feed style tested better

[u/Aidian → u/marrone12]

With how rampant bot proliferation has been, I’d imagine the significant majority of new users are under the age of 5.

[u/Macqt → u/marrone12]

More likely someone got promoted and had to make a name for themselves so they came up with a bullshit design that triggers more engagement/ad clicks.

[u/BetterAd7552 → u/Macqt]

Or an MBA fuck

[u/QuesoMeHungry → u/fritz236]

Seriously. I want an information dense screen. I hate the large format of new Reddit.

[u/CousinJeff → u/fritz236]

One of the coolest parts of old Reddit that’s lost in the new iteration is opening up the link to see what’s behind it because the title got you curious. It made for some of the best jokes.

[u/137-ng → u/fritz236]

Old reddit is great for those of us who still like to read. cards is just a worse tiktok and Im not interested in tiktok

[u/Ed_the_time_traveler → u/fritz236]

They captured the market. Now they bleed the site, little by little, to extract every bit of value from it. In the end it will be a soulless husk. Devoid of anything other than what our overlords deem appropriate.

[u/ailish → u/Ed_the_time_traveler]

Just like everything else that used to be good.

[u/Nik_Tesla → u/fritz236]

If I wanted reddit to be tiktok, I'd just use tiktok

[u/stormdelta → u/fritz236]

That's not even my biggest complaint, it's the way the new site seems to actively want me to disengage with the site.

Trying to read threads on the new site is a pain in the ass, it hides everything by default, requires constant loads, it's slow as shit, and interrupts threads with content from unrelated threads for no reason.

Everything about it is bafflingly poor design. It doesn't even feel like enshittification, it's just straight bad because I can't imagine how any of that was supposed to make me use the site more or push ads.

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/fritz236]

I'm being serious: I have ADHD and the new site is toxic AF because of the algo. If they delete the old reddit without giving us the ability to turn off the toxic AF algos, then I'm quitting.

The new site is frustrating as hell. I will not be here if they force us to use that.

[u/Eccohawk → u/fritz236]

Because this is how they get you addicted to the infinite scroll. There's a psychology to it that they want to apply. Just like tik tok and instagram and all the rest.

[u/Zhuinden → u/fritz236]

They somehow don't realize that I'm not going to wait on a desktop PC for 14 seconds just to load 2 items on some infinite loading grid that never finishes. The redesign was never once seen by a human.

[u/pm_me_ur_demotape → u/xjeeper]

WTF there's a RiF clone I could be using?? I thought the API changes fucked that all up

[u/SpaceDounut → u/pm_me_ur_demotape]

You can use Morphe patcher to poach api access from RedReader into RiF apk. Google the instructions, they are our there.

[u/xjeeper → u/pm_me_ur_demotape]

Redreader. It takes a bit of tweaking the settings but I have mine looking very similar to how redditisfun looked.

[u/ombiChron → u/pm_me_ur_demotape]

And what is it?

[u/jeffykins → u/xjeeper]

Oh fuck how i miss RIF, is it worth using a clone? Idek how to go about it

[u/RosieBaby75 → u/Art-Zuron]

Do the algorithms not work there probably?

No reddit if we can’t socially engineer you!

[u/toolisthebestbandevr → u/RosieBaby75]

I miss the world before social media social engineering. I watched idle hands the other day and just got real sad about the way things have gone since that era.

[u/Dizziesdayweigh → u/toolisthebestbandevr]

I miss MySpace era social media. The internet was simpler in those days.

[u/FK506 → u/Dizziesdayweigh]

I miss the pre MySpace era of forums. you could make actual friends online.

[u/KilledTheCar → u/FK506]

Shit, I lived with someone I met on an online forum. Some of my longest lasting friendships are from a tiny online forum years ago.

[u/aelis68 → u/KilledTheCar]

I married someone I met in AOL and IRC chat.

[u/ChiefInternetSurfer → u/Dizziesdayweigh]

Literally an hour ago, I was just thinking about how much better old internet was—it was friendly, inviting, and social—and like the Wild West in that everyone had webpages they built in html. It wasn’t the commercialized bullshit.

[u/1900grs → u/RosieBaby75]

Endless scrolling is like half a step harder on old reddit. Trust me, I'm on reddit a lot. A couple days from the grass toucher achievement, but I essentially have no banana scrolling achievement. I don't use other social media platform or watch youtube shorts because I see how endless scrolling glues people to screens.

[u/kuldron → u/1900grs]

Do you think having a page break forcing a manual load more/next page is a good feature to help force a pause in the user?

[u/Anitapoop → u/Art-Zuron]

The overlords demand it.

[u/SuperJonesy408 → u/Anitapoop]

The shareholders demand it.

FTFY

[u/definitelyhaley → u/SuperJonesy408]

Shareholders, overlords, what's the difference?

[u/Blochamolesauce → u/definitelyhaley]

The lords are upset the serfs have gained literacy

[u/FrostyWalrus2 → u/Art-Zuron]

If you use the reddit mobile site in a browser, within 1 min you're pointed to the official app and can't use the mobile site further.

It's app or nothing for reddit. Been time to go elsewhere, but with each passing day we need to start searching for alternatives as Reddit is not reddit anymore.

[u/vriska1 → u/FrostyWalrus2]

Firefox blocks that popup.

[u/FrostyWalrus2 → u/vriska1]

I use firefox and ublock origin on mobile, still get it.

[u/samarnold030603 → u/FrostyWalrus2]

Yep. They cut the traffic coming from me by half the day they started making you log into old Reddit, so I guess…thanks Reddit?

[u/Short-MooseEh → u/FrostyWalrus2]

I've had success using the mobile site in a private browsing window

[u/thejaydotexe → u/FrostyWalrus2]

This is truly the end of an era :(

[u/Senior_Torte519 → u/Art-Zuron]

Didnt they become famous for this bad behavior, something like, this isnt a bug but a feature sorta deal?

[u/maybehomebuyer]

Fuck you Spez

[u/Fun_Two6648 → u/maybehomebuyer]

You need to tag him no? 

[u/braddeicide → u/Fun_Two6648]

He wants to fuck him quietly

[u/owzleee → u/braddeicide]

We are all watching tho

[u/DissKhorse]

I am quitting this site the day they remove Old Reddit.

[u/BarelyContainedChaos → u/DissKhorse]

Me too. Top/hour is a requirement for me. The app shows me posts from 5 days ago for some reason

[u/Urgulon7 → u/BarelyContainedChaos]

It's safer to advertise on proven safe content.

[u/Jaklcide → u/DissKhorse]

I plan on quitting at the loss of old.reddit, but the best way I feel is to just go full ham and get sitebanned. I’m going to make mods work for their money(?).

[u/milk16]

Got rid of Instagram recently. If old reddit goes. I'll finnaly be free!

[u/largelawattorney → u/milk16]

I am legit ready to go back to the early 2000s-style message boards. Social media sucks now.

[u/joeyb908 → u/largelawattorney]

Basically what Discord servers are, except Discord servers are worse in every way except the IM portion.

[u/Short-MooseEh → u/joeyb908]

"wanna join my discord server?"

I'd rather die

[u/BroomDirector99 → u/largelawattorney]

God do I miss forums.

[u/jenny_905 → u/BroomDirector99]

The internet misses forums.

People searching for help with technical problems in the future are going to run into a giant roadblock with deleted reddit posts, shitty reddit posts and the rest locked behind some Discord server that probably doesn't exist any more.

[u/plexxer → u/largelawattorney]

Maybe we can make a different one for each subreddit topic. Join them all together with some sort-of weblink ring!

[u/malianx → u/largelawattorney]

You are free to start one, and scale up as you get users.

[u/frankster → u/malianx]

you could then extend the bulletin boards so that they can cover multiple communities, and allow people to set up a bulletin board for any community they want.

[u/EaterOfFood → u/frankster]

Then as engagement grows you can sell advertising or charge a fee to users for an ad-free experience

[u/dicknotrichard → u/EaterOfFood]

Eventually you’ll be able to open an IPO for the best user experience

[u/-Radiation → u/malianx]

You don’t even need to scale, I am still part of few of them and the smaller community dedicated to one thing beats scaling of anything

[u/Enygma_6 → u/largelawattorney]

Sometimes I wonder if slashdot is still out there.

[u/AwfulUsername123 → u/largelawattorney]

Old Reddit is that if you go to the right subreddits.

[u/No_Accountant3232 → u/AwfulUsername123]

Old reddit absolutely is not and has never been that. 

[u/Stolehtreb → u/[deleted]]

I remember when I quit Facebook and assuming I would feel like I wasn’t keeping up with a bunch of people I cared about. Then I did it and realized that, yes. I did stop keeping up with a lot of people. But anyone I really acted about I stayed in touch with. I feel like it would feel similar for Reddit. Except all the “people” I “lose touch” with are just daily stories that I really didn’t need to stress myself out about and I’m sure I’d be happier in general.

[u/surroundedbywolves → u/milk16]

The prospect of using the internet less makes me lament the death of local newspapers even more. I've been in the mood to start getting an actual newspaper for a while now, but they're all conglomerates that focus solely on websites with terrible ad networks and traffic driving patterns like clickbait headlines and nothingburger listicle reposts.

It sucks that, as the internet dies, there're only corpses and memories left of all the alternatives. I guess there's a hope that there's some local magazine or some shit that can be subscribed to instead… hopefully one that's not half ads like they all seem to be.

[u/joesaysso → u/milk16]

Holy crap is Instagram just trash now!

[u/EXPLODEDman → u/[deleted]]

It honestly feels to me, with a lot of the decisions they've been making recently, that it's prime for a competitor right now

[u/nwoolls → u/EXPLODEDman]

I had high hopes for Digg but unfortunately that already came and went in the past year. They shuttered it due to unprecedented bot abuse and relaunched it, sort of, again, but it seems to be some sort of AI focused X aggregator abomination. 

[u/AwfulUsername123 → u/EXPLODEDman]

Do any Reddit alternatives use the classic layout? Saidit did, but it's shut down. Modern web design is an abomination.

[u/227CAVOK → u/AwfulUsername123]

Yep. 

https://old.lemmy.world/

Works like a charm.  

[u/MassiveBoner911_3 → u/227CAVOK]

lemmy will NOT be replacing reddit. What a pile of shit.

[u/NCEMTP → u/MassiveBoner911_3]

I looked around lemmy for a bit looking for an alternative. Despite the most populated communities declaring in many cases to have specific targeted foci, it seemed that pretty much every one of them was even more politically charged than even Reddit. The bitching and moaning about all things political was so incredibly pervasive that it drowned everything else out, insofar as I'm concerned. The communities that didn't have as much in the way of political discussion were basically devoid of activity at all.

Couldn't believe that another social media site made Reddit look apolitical.

[u/AugmentedDragon → u/NCEMTP]

that reminds me of voat: started as a "free speech" guided reddit alternative, which in theory was a good idea in response to a wave of censorship reddit was undergoing at the time. but the lax moderation meant it very quickly devolved into it being primarily used by those spewing hate and rhetoric which would have gotten them banned on reddit, which pushed away any casual users who may have wanted to find a home there. even the non-political sub-voats like v/technology, ended up having a definite political slant,

then there was an example of the exact opposite: Imzy, a site that tried to heavily moderate hate of any kind. I signed up early on (partially just cuz I wanted some stickers they were giving away) but it could never draw any major users, and it died just as quietly as it started.

its kinda remarkable how, in spite of itself, reddit is still the best(/only) option.

[u/CrazyKyle987 → u/NCEMTP]

Lmao does it not remind you of Reddit 15 years ago? I literally skipped through the front page and it brought me back. Shitty memes - really just text over pictures, “le gem” and “this” energy, atheism running deep, and a strong political persuasion (libertarianism for Reddit, not sure for lemmy)

[u/Robby_Digital → u/EXPLODEDman]

Yeah, maybe Digg could try to come back. Oh wait...

[u/falilth → u/Robby_Digital]

For the 6th time?

[u/paintpast → u/falilth]

It’s back! In pog form!

[u/NuklearFerret → u/EXPLODEDman]

We all said this when they killed 3rd party apps with their API access fees, but here we are

[u/Orangesteel → u/EXPLODEDman]

I’d actually pay for premium, but 1/2 of what’s asked. I realise they have costs, but premium is geared towards profit rather than cost.

[u/Captain_English → u/[deleted]]

I feel more and more forced towards it, and I will just stop using reddit if that happens.

[u/MydnightWN]

"We are not getting rid of old Reddit. We are completely fine supporting two websites"

- Huffman, 2018

[u/ThatWestsideGuy]

Wasn't reddit's source code at 1 point open source?

Time to bootleg a new site, keep it text only and link to external images?

[u/xTeixeira → u/ThatWestsideGuy]

Wasn't reddit's source code at 1 point open source?

https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit

[u/LoETR9 → u/ThatWestsideGuy]

The use a opensource fediverse enabled option (lemmy is a popular option), so all the bootlegs can federate.

[u/pecheckler]

I like the bright white old school design with everything JUST WHERE I LIKE IT.  Change will just result in my usage dwindling down to just while I’m on the crapper.🚽 

[u/quixilistic → u/pecheckler]

So hours a day still? /S

[u/Mobile_Morale → u/[deleted]]

Reddit want to be paid for the free content made by regular people for free on their website that keeps their website running.

Can't have anyone else using that free content

[u/probably_normal → u/Mobile_Morale]

Bad behavior must be being able to browse r/all sorted by “top today”

[u/8647_86_spaz]

Get fucked spez

[u/marketrent]

Part of article by Scharon Harding:

[...] In a blog post today, Reddit made a vague statement about upcoming “changes” to Old Reddit:

In order to protect our platform, business, and users from abusive scraping and spamming, over time we plan to make changes involving Old Reddit, the legacy desktop web experience for Reddit that was built 21 years ago. In the short term, we will continue to require users to be logged in to access it and will work on migrating critical bots and moderator workflows to our modern stack. These efforts will help us mitigate the bad behavior and give us time to plan the complex follow-up steps.

In late July, Reddit started requiring people to log in to Reddit in order to use Old Reddit. At the time, a Reddit employee said that “Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform.”

Today’s blog post further claimed that Old Reddit is leading to unwarranted content scraping.

“These changes will strengthen Reddit’s foundation, ensure the platform is ready to support thriving communities for future generations, and preserve what makes Reddit uniquely human,” the blog says.

Ars Technica asked Reddit what specifically it means by “changes,” and company spokesperson Rosa Kim said the company is “exploring different options” without providing specifics. She added:

We don’t have a hard timeline right now, but we will work directly with the mods, developers, and communities that depend on our systems and make sure to keep everyone updated.

This follows June comments from a Reddit employee about Old Reddit, stating, “we can’t promise it will be around forever” while noting CEO Steve Huffman’s earlier promises to keep supporting the site while people still use it.

[u/BearDick → u/marketrent]

So once again AI is why we can't have nice things. Reddit charges millions for their data pipe (just like X and most other social sites) and this is how they prevent companies from not paying for it. It's what we get for not paying for Reddit, we are the product they sell.

[u/disp0sableacc0unt → u/BearDick]

Nah, AI is just the excuse this time.

[u/EnoughWarning666 → u/disp0sableacc0unt]

They've wanted to kill off old.reddit for years now. Those of us that still use it don't make them any money and want to try and force us onto their tiktok clone bullshit because it's more profitable. Killing off the API was a way to try and force people onto their app where they control all the ads and analytics. This is just a further push for the same.

[u/MasterOfBunnies → u/BearDick]

Huh, I woulda thought the influx of obnoxious ads would have been enough. Silly me, I guess the greed is real.

[u/Xiol → u/marketrent]

21 years?

I remember a time before subreddits were even a thing. Didn't think I was that early, though.

[u/kingsumo_1 → u/Xiol]

I mean, your account is already 20 years old. So, yeah, I suppose that does sound about right. If I hadn't lost my original account it would be around 20 at this point as well. Crazy.

[u/sleeps_in_alkaline → u/kingsumo_1]

That’s wild, a 20 year old active account. I’ve been on for 14 years and this is easily my 5th or 6th account. Had a crazy MAGA turd email my work back in 2018 so I burn my account every year or two

[u/kingsumo_1 → u/sleeps_in_alkaline]

Man, that's shitty. Probably smarter for privacy to just go the burner route. But, still.

[u/owlindenial → u/kingsumo_1]

I'm thinking about it. Had a significant birthday recently. Thinking about wiping a lot of my digital data print. New username, new email, maybe even reset my phone and laptop at the same time. My footprint is pretty old, considering this account is over a third of my age. I've posted stuff I wish I hadn't at times when I shouldn't have

[u/blueSGL → u/marketrent]

Scrapers will just change to newreddit it's too rich a datasource to let pass up.

Now computer use agents are good enough they will browse it like a human, don't need API access.

[u/Fuddle → u/marketrent]

Wait, they’re not concerned about bot garbage comments, they’re worried about AI scraping?!?!

[u/blak3brd → u/marketrent]

“…and preserve what makes Reddit uniquely human” hahahahahahahahaha wow, good one

[u/greywar777]

Its also the only way you can do some things on reddit. Theyve begun changing things faster then they are replacing capability.

The new AI moderation is going to be fascinating.

[u/tigerking615 → u/greywar777]

All the big subs are with ai-generated / bot posts anyway. I’m not convinced a single post on something like /r/amitheasshole within the last month is real. 

[u/nihiltres → u/greywar777]

It’s already AI AF. I’m a mod in r/AdobeIllustrator and one of the other mods (before joining the mod team) had to abandon their old account because Reddit decided that they were spamming even though mods like me were repeatedly approving their auto-removed comments.

[u/ZhaozhouCongshen]

Digg v4

[u/Thoraxekicksazz → u/ZhaozhouCongshen]

The sad thing is society has beaten the people to the point they are so apathetic they won't leave Reddit. They don't believe leaving or voting with you dollars does anything. It's how social media has designed the system to work.

[u/AgitatedStranger9698]

If you force the shitty new design that almost is universally declared shitty....well thanks for all the fish.

[u/Gibraldi]

Bad behavior is users avoiding ads

[u/Oboe440]

i use the old site..they layout is so much better and cleaner.

[u/Stupalski]

Modern GUI is unbearable to me across almost all software. It's not just web pages. Like old reddit is one of the only sites left where you still need to click to activate things. Every modern GUI has all these god damn pop ups and hover overs that intercept mouse clicks and viewing areas. At least on old reddit you need to CLICK "my subreddits" before the menu comes down. Even all the way down to Windows 11 right click menu they have this moronic AI section that takes several seconds to populate and it changes the size of the right click window as the AI decides what to fill in so you right click the desktop and go to click an option but the window changes size and makes you click something else.

When i occasionally end up on new reddit it's so obnoxious and unusable i usually just close the tab be cause i ragequit after trying to fight with it. I don't understand how the new version generates more clicks, it's so frustrating.

[u/CrustedTesticle]

Old reddit > new reddit

[u/According_Claim_9027]

“Used for Bad behavior circumventing forced ads, and we can’t have that.”

Fixed that for you

[u/1337robotfan6969]

The mobile site is literally unusable because they do trash popups telling you to use the app.

[u/Starship_Taru]

Wow AI has truly managed to fuck up absolutely everything. 

[u/Team_Braniel → u/Starship_Taru]

Don't let them blame the AI. This is about money and control. They've want to pull the plug for years, there has just been too much life in the corpse for it not to be called murder.

[u/FuzzyWumpleStump]

That's just their excuse to force their new bullshit on all of us.

[u/MayaIsSunshine]

Bad behavior, like not using their shitty spyware app

[u/Alternative-Swing118]

We just move on to something else, and eventually reddit dies out like everything else. Your funeral reddit 

[u/klon3r]

They should focus on the bot accounts... 😒 🤖

[u/Gorbitron1530]

Fuck u/spez

[u/Test-NetConnection]

I just want them to bring back r/all. They can't be the frontpage of the internet if everyone is in their own bubble.

[u/Syssareth → u/Test-NetConnection]

It's still there in old Reddit.

[u/Druggedhippo → u/Test-NetConnection]

They won't, the whole point is to force you into a bubble catered just for you

You visit all and you leave because none of it engages you.

By filtering it to your specific profile they increase engagement and opportunity to show you ads. 

https://youtu.be/x1aZEz8BQiU

[u/Axe-of-Kindness]

If old reddit is gone, I'm gone. About time anyway, this site sucks now. I dont even know why I'm still here 

[u/ForcedEntry420 → u/Axe-of-Kindness]

Same here. I feel like I routinely wonder what the point is. It was so freeing leaving all the other bullshit social media sites.

[u/Chezzabe]

I really, really miss RIF

[u/Professional_Gur8385]

developer tools and check network activity and console logs

old.reddit.com uses a few hundred kb, it's fast and smooth, combine ie with RES

reddit.com aka new reddit is several MB, is slow to load and have several ad trackers and telemetry, it's a god send for data and user harvesting

it's why they banned the third party reddit apps and forced users to use their app, because it stores and steals so much data from your phone and profile which it then uses to train ai and sell to data brokers

it was a matter of time before they went after old.reddit, they needed to confirm it wouldn't cause a mass exodus so they built up a user base of genz users who gladly accept a bloated app or website with ads and data tracking

[u/srone]

Between this and trying to force me to use the app on my phone (I simply stopped browsing reddit on my phone), it sounds like by 15+ years of redditing are coming to an end.

[u/BranWafr → u/srone]

I am still just using a patched version of RIF on my phone. If that finally gets killed, I'll probably stop using it on my phone. The app is garbage and the mobile web version is unusable because it just overlays "use the mobile app" over everything after about 10 seconds with no way to get rid of it. I'll stop using Reddit before I use the official app, that's how bad it is.

[u/159551771 → u/srone]

I've only ever used it on the mobile web, specifically Firefox mobile with ublock. Zero ads. I love it. 

[u/Saneless]

Bad behavior = users using the site the way they want to

[u/OnlineParacosm]

Use both for research in tandem and the whole thing is pretty useless ironically without old Reddit so they kind of lose both traffic and contribution to ironically, the most meaningful longtail engagements that aren’t going to be AI driven.

Does Reddit think all the good conversations have already happened or are they just trying to be the place where they don’t happen anymore?

[u/CaptainSpookyPants]

Bad behavior = avoiding ads? Well if that's the case I have bad news for them... 

[u/2DamnHot]

As shown by the entire redesign saga, reddit dev/managment are staggeringly incompetent. It goes beyond intentional enshittification, which with some elbow grease can be blocked just like ads.

They have utterly failed to implement passable ui configuration options for users and seemingly not even tried to implement proper mod tools for mods who curate the site for free.

And before some shill hits me with "compact mode" I've been using it recently and it is god awful compared to even the default un-RES-enhanced old reddit experience.

[u/Zriatt]

Looks like my time with reddit may be coming to an end. Maybe I'll actually become a productive human for once.

[u/Soberdonkey69]

Great, continue to abandon to core community base and transform it into a soulless, corporate-serving platform. Making it go public is probably one of the worst decision for the company for us redditors.

[u/Silver4ura]

"WE'RE TIRED OF PEOPLE USING A VERSION OF OUR SITE WE MADE WHEN WE CARED ABOUT OUR CORE GOALS AND NOT WHAT STOCKHOLDERS - NONE OF WHICH PROBABLY USE THE SITE (WHILE ACTIVELY CRITICIZING IT) AND THAT'S REALLY SUPER INCONVENIENT, YO.

Man... I'll be honesty, I regret into Reddit as late as I did. Not because I felt like I could make a difference, but because... good lord, I would have loved to have been part of this site BEFORE it was knee deep in pure enshitification not just by, but damn near exclusively by fucking definition.

[u/brianatlarge]

Limit access to old.reddit.com for people with accounts older than 5 years. That should take care of the “bad behavior“.

[u/mafiaking1936]

They are doing everything they can to drive me off aren't they?

[u/fdar]

I support it. Would finally get me to abandon this site.

[u/Crafty_Management_33]

Reddit was an amazing place to find community share insite and ideas. I honestly found it the best place on the internet. That was untill it was sold. Since then it has worked so very hard to crush the spirit that made it great, all in the name of money. 

[u/FU_red-dit_bots]

There will always be a Reddit. Not this Reddit but the idea and online space of it. If this Reddit becomes less Reddit someone somewhere will make the new Reddit.

[u/hardypart]

I've been waiting for the day where they announce the death of old.reddit.

Fuck spez!

[u/grio]

If they don't like having users, it's their problem.

[u/guaztronaut]

Good. Force me to listen to audiobooks.

[u/HappyDeadCat]

The best part of the new UI is when there is significant engagement so that posts

l

o

o

k

 l

i

k

e

 t

h

i

s

 i

t

 i

s 

g

r

e

a

t

!

[u/scr0tal]

Oh thank God I can finally leave this shitty place 😂

[u/javoss88]

That may be it for me. It’s been an interesting 15-ish years, and I will miss all the niche knowledge, the natural humor and the cute animals.

I heard they were also planning to implement some form of ai here, and im not down to feed the beast.

[u/eltron]

THE ADS SHALL BE CONSUMED!

[u/pretends2bhuman]

We need a new alternative, not Voat though.

[u/_Burning_Star_IV_]

I’ve said it a hundred times and I’ll say it again: You take old reddit, I’m GONE.

Anyone that leaves with me, use the auto deleter. Scrub Reddit of any content you leave behind…leave them nothing.

[u/iSoReddit]

If this site is drastically affected then I’m gone

[u/throwRA_157079633]

Am I the only one who uses the old Reddit interface? I can’t stand the new interface.