Reddit said it will shift to a primarily logged-in experience, a significant change for a platform long associated with the open web. The company says the move will help it build a more direct relationship with users and protect its vast repository of user-generated content from being scraped by AI systems without compensation.
The shift comes as Reddit and other publishers face declining referral traffic from search engines such as Google. AI-powered search summaries answer queries directly on results pages, reducing clicks to original sources.
By requiring users to log in, Reddit aims to collect more first-party data, strengthen its advertising business, and gain more control over its valuable data, which it licenses to AI companies.