Reddit is killing RSS feeds and restricting access to Old Reddit, blames AI scrapping bots

Reddit has announced sweeping changes to two longstanding platform features that longtime users consider essential, triggering immediate backlash across the community. In an announcement posted on r/modnews, administrators confirmed that RSS feed support will be discontinued on November 13, 2026, citing its use as “a common route for large-scale scraping and automated abuse”. The company acknowledged that “RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for many years”, yet provided no alternative for the substantial portion of users who depend on feed readers to track subreddit updates. This decision affects content aggregators, accessibility tools, and privacy-conscious users who preferred RSS for consuming Reddit without engaging with the full website or mobile app ecosystem.

The second contentious change involves Old Reddit, the legacy interface that predates Reddit's algorithmic feed redesigns. Beginning in the coming months, access will be restricted to logged-in users who have visited the platform within the preceding six months, a significant tightening from the initial requirement that users simply log in. Moderator accounts remain exempt from this recent-use requirement, according to the announcement. Critics argue this gatekeeping mechanism serves as a soft elimination strategy rather than a genuine security measure, noting that scrapers can easily create fresh accounts regardless of activity history. The restrictions come despite Reddit's assertion that they target abusive automation, when similar protections could theoretically distinguish between legitimate casual users and coordinated bot networks.

The moves compound existing tensions following Reddit's controversial API pricing changes, which effectively shuttered popular third-party apps like Apollo and forced thousands of moderators to abandon customized tooling. Multiple news outlets observed that these restrictions align strategically with Reddit's expanding data licensing business, particularly lucrative deals with AI companies OpenAI and Google valued at approximately $60 million annually. Longtime users and digital rights advocates characterize the pattern as systematically closing open web protocols while monetizing the same data through controlled corporate channels. In my opinion, it appears that Reddit is actively dismantling the features that made it accessible and user-controlled, while simultaneously selling the collective content to AI training programs.