Reddit is changing its approach to the open web and moving to a login-only model. The company has decided to limit free access to content for unregistered visitors to protect its data from being collected by artificial intelligence developers and to compensate for the loss of search traffic.
Reddit is changing its approach to the open web and moving to a login-only model. The company has decided to limit free access to content for unregistered visitors to protect its data from being collected by artificial intelligence developers and to compensate for the loss of search traffic.
This was announced during a teleconference following the results of the third quarter by Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Guffman, TechCrunch writes .
The main reason for this move was the rapid decline in the number of clicks from search engines, especially Google, where artificial intelligence answers replace regular links. In October, Reddit was losing an average of more than 1 million search clicks per week. The company estimates that this could lead to a 10-12% drop in the number of daily active users (DAU) in the next quarter, to an estimated 115-117 million.
The decline is already being felt in the platform’s main market: in the third quarter, the number of daily users in the US fell to 50.7 million, down 2% from last year. The total global DAU audience remained at 130.3 million.
Forced login will close content from free parsing by AI bots and force tech giants to enter into formal licensing agreements. In addition, logged-in users are more valuable to advertisers due to better targeting capabilities.
Despite the drop in traffic, Reddit’s financial performance has improved significantly. The company’s revenue for the third quarter increased by 53% compared to the same period last year and reached $895 million, exceeding analysts’ expectations ($875 million). Net income jumped by 74% to $283 million. Advertising revenue grew by 54% to $847 million, while non-advertising revenue, which includes the sale of data for training AI, brought in $48 million (up 35%). Thanks to this, the average revenue per user in the US increased by 53% to $13.82.
The changes will be implemented gradually: in the fourth quarter, the new model will begin to be tested in select markets outside the US. At the same time, Reddit assured that authorization will not require giving up anonymity, and the "incognito" mode is currently being updated.
"This is a big change for someone whose life has been closely tied to the open internet. There are still many questions about where to draw the line between functionality for registered and unregistered users. But this is the right decision for our platform and its future," said Steve Guffman.
It was previously reported that the IT forum Stack Overflow has lost a significant number of monthly questions after the launch of the ChatGPT chatbot and the emergence of other AI models. This threatens the very existence of the platform. Its monthly question volume has fallen from a peak of over 200,000 in 2014 to less than 50,000 by the end of 2025.
