Reddit Announces Shift to Logged-In-Only Experience to Curb AI Scraping and Boost Ads
Reddit CEO states the move aims to protect data, improve UX, and strengthen ads, with testing starting outside the US in Q4.
Reddit announced on Thursday that it is transitioning to a primarily logged-in experience, marking one of the most significant shifts in its 21-year history. The decision was revealed alongside its third-quarter earnings report, aiming to address growing data scraping issues in the AI era and further unlock the potential of its advertising business.
In an interview with Axios, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman stated that the company is making this change to improve user experience, bolster its ads business, and prevent bots from scraping its proprietary data. Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong noted that this does not represent a change in strategy but rather a push to build a more direct relationship with users. Over the past decade, Reddit received significant search traffic because its data corpus was open, but this did not alter the company's core mission.
Huffman emphasized that when users are logged in, they spend more time on Reddit, allowing the company to better understand their interests and target ads more effectively. He revealed that over 80% of monetization comes from the app and logged-in users, limiting short-term risk. According to Wong, engagement among logged-in users is about five times that of logged-out users, resulting in more impressions and better business outcomes for advertisers. Performance advertising currently accounts for more than 60% of Reddit's ad revenue and is its fastest-growing segment.
Regarding implementation, Reddit will begin testing the fully logged-in experience in select markets outside the US this quarter, collecting data before rolling out broader changes gradually. The homepage will remain accessible to logged-out visitors, and users accessing via search engines or shared links will still see specific content. However, participation features like commenting and content ranking will be restricted to logged-in users. Additionally, Reddit is relaunching an incognito browsing mode within its app, allowing users to browse and search without affecting their accounts, though this mode will be read-only.