Reddit Requires Login for Old.Reddit.com Within 1 Month as Scraping Abuse Mounts

3 articles · Updated · Ars Technica · Jun 30

Over the next month, Reddit will phase in a login requirement for anyone using old.reddit.com, ending anonymous access to the legacy interface.
Reddit said old Reddit’s logged-out experience has become a major source of abusive scraping and automated traffic, and login data gives it more signals to detect and block rule-breaking accounts.
Boat-botany, a Reddit employee, tied the move to enforcement against activity that disrupts normal platform use or violates Reddit’s API rules; old.reddit.com was still accessible without login when the report was published.
The change is likely to frustrate longtime users and moderators who prefer old Reddit’s simpler layout and have used it without signing in for convenience or privacy.
Users discussing the shift said malicious traffic keeps evolving, and old Reddit may be harder to defend because it lacks parts of Reddit’s newer security stack.