Reddit will force users to log in as AI is killing search traffic

Reddit will no longer allow logged out users or those without an account to view content on its platform, CEO Steve Huffman shared in an update. The change, which the company said will initially be tested in "select markets" outside the US, comes as the company says that search traffic has declined significantly.

"A key piece of work to retain new audiences is shifting Reddit to a logged-in-only experience," Huffman wrote in a shareholder letter. "Moving to primarily logged-in will ensure our users have the best Reddit experience possible, and can find the content and communities most relevant to them."

The change is the most dramatic shift the company has made as it battles AI scraping and changes to internet search. It will also likely rattle users, some of whom are already frustrated with recent moves like restrictions on Old Reddit. Huffman said that it was a "big change" but necessary for the company.

"It is better for our business because we will have more signals for ads targeting, and being logged-in leads to higher engagement generally," he wrote. "It also allows us to protect access to Reddit's extremely valuable corpus of data, and helps us better adapt to emerging regulations around the world."

Huffman didn't explicitly mention age verification laws, but requiring users to log in would presumably help the company comply with such measures.

Huffman said the company is still working on figuring out exactly when logged out users will encounter a "hard prompt" to log in. "We need to find the right boundary," he said during the company's third-quarter earnings call. "Whether they're coming from a shared link or maybe from search ... there'll be some version of Reddit accessible for those moments before we do that hard prompt."

Reddit's CEO, who has been clearly frustrated with the state of online search and Google's AI overviews for a while, was more explicit in his criticism. "The reality is, the AI mode does not drive traffic, not for us and not to anybody, as far as I know," he said. "So that's just a fundamental shift in how Google works. It used to be a traffic driver, now it's not."

The company reported that search traffic was "down meaningfully" in the most recent quarter, with the company seeing referrals from search drop by more than 1 million each week during the month of October.

Reddit's relationship with Google is also complicated. The company has a licensing deal with the search giant so it can access the platform's data for AI training. That deal is reportedly worth about $60 million a year. More recently, there are reports that Reddit may be reconsidering this arrangement. When asked about it on the call, Huffman said there are "active discussions" but didn't share specifics. "What's most important is that any deal we do needs to advance our long-term strategy, it has to be a fair exchange of value," he said.

Huffman hinted at some other product changes the company is considering to help it grow engagement with logged in users. The Reddit founder said the company is working on adding "more organization" to its main feed to make it "more consistent" and "less grab bag-ey" than it currently is.

He also suggested that an "incognito mode" could be in the works. He speculated that adding "private browsing" could help the company address users who repeatedly uninstall and reinstall the Reddit app.