Old Reddit Could Be The Next Casualty Of Reddit's War On AI Scraping

Key Points:

• Reddit plans to make unspecified changes to Old Reddit, its 21-year-old desktop version, to combat abusive scraping and spamming, potentially signaling a move away from supporting the legacy platform.
• The company is gradually blocking access to Old Reddit for logged-out users, a significant source of automated traffic, while working to migrate critical bots and moderator workflows to its modern tech stack.
• Reddit is exploring options including limiting access, migrating important uses, or rebuilding Old Reddit on a modern foundation, with no firm timeline announced but ongoing communication promised with affected communities.
• In 2023, Reddit began charging for API access to fight AI scraping, effectively ending many third-party apps, and now plans to phase out its API entirely in favor of the more controlled Developer Platform, incentivizing developers to transition.
• Reddit is overhauling its moderation tools by expanding its LLM-based Rules Hub system, which aims to replace AutoMod's enforcement capabilities by better understanding rule intent and handling nuanced moderation cases.