Reddit signals ominous upcoming "changes” for old.reddit.com - Ars Technica

Reddit signaled in an August 5, 2026 blog post that it plans unspecified "changes" to old.reddit.com, the 21-year-old legacy desktop layout favored by many long-time users for its simpler design and fewer feed recommendations.

The company framed the moves as protecting its platform, business, and users from what it calls "abusive scraping and spamming," claiming Old Reddit is a significant source of automated traffic and unwarranted content scraping.

In the short term, Reddit will continue requiring users to be logged in to access Old Reddit—a rule introduced in late July—and will work on migrating critical bots and moderator workflows to its modern stack.

Reddit spokesperson Rosa Kim said the company is "exploring different options" without specifics or a firm timeline, promising to work with moderators, developers, and communities and keep them updated; a June employee comment warned the site "can't promise it will be around forever," despite CEO Steve Huffman's earlier pledges to support it while people use it.

The announcement fits a broader pattern of anti-scraping efforts, including lawsuits against Perplexity, Anthropic, and others, blocking the Internet Archive, and restricting crawler access for search engines lacking deals with Reddit.

Reddit is also building on its controversial 2023 decision to charge for API access—which shut down most third-party apps and was aimed at stopping generative AI firms from training large language models for free—by beginning to restrict new API access requests.