Reddit is putting more limits on old.reddit.com

Reddit announced additional upcoming restrictions on Old Reddit. Soon, the platform won’t let people use Old.Reddit.com unless they have used the site while logged in within the previous six months. In July, Reddit started requiring that users be logged in to access Old Reddit, and the company says this new requirement is an effort to reduce its biggest source of scraping and automated traffic.

In a Reddit post, an employee known as “judy-funnie” said that “in the next few months, we’ll further limit access for logged-in users to only those who have used Old Reddit in the last six months (which covers the vast majority of all Old Reddit users).” Moderators are exempt: they will still be able to view Old Reddit regardless of when they last used it, as long as they are logged in. The post said this “helps keep Old Reddit available for the people who rely on it while reducing automated abuse,” and Reddit claimed that forcing users to log in to use Old Reddit “helped reduce scraping and automated abuse.”

Further restrictions on Old Reddit, which many longtime Reddit users prefer over regular Reddit for its look, layout, homepage feed, and familiarity, have people concerned that Reddit will shutter Old Reddit one day. Asked whether Reddit has plans to shut down Old Reddit, spokesperson Rosa Kim said via email that, as Reddit CEO Steve Huffman previously confirmed, Reddit is continuing to work on the future of Old Reddit. Kim said the change is “about limiting unauthenticated access and reducing automated abuse—not removing Old Reddit for people and moderators who rely on it,” adding that Reddit wants “to preserve Old Reddit for the real people that use it, not let it be a vector for automated abuse.”

Reddit’s announcement noted that the current rules permit “any logged-in account to access Old Reddit, including accounts with no prior Old Reddit use.” Asked why that is a bad thing, Kim did not respond.