Logged-out Old Reddit access is “significant source of abusive scraping."

Reddit will start requiring people to be logged into Reddit to use old.reddit.com.

The new requirement will take effect “over the next month,” a Reddit employee going by the username boat-botany announced on the social media platform today. The person claimed that the change is part of an ongoing effort to “tighten how automated systems access Reddit.”

The Reddit employee wrote:

Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It’s also an important interface for many long-time mods and Redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in.

  • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    5 hours ago

    1. My city’s subreddit is very active (though the moderators recently went mad with power). I’m actively stealing their content to grow the Lemmy community for it.

    2. People talk about legal stuff a lot on Reddit, including asking (ex-)cops questions about them (because lots of (ex-)cops use Reddit).