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Reddit's scraping crackdown strands readers who follow subreddits by feed
Reddit will end RSS feeds on Nov. 13 and public API access in March 2027, citing scraping. Moderators and bot builders get migration paths into Reddit's own tools, but people who follow subreddits in a feed reader get no replacement.
The Product Desk · Product desk
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What happened
- Reddit stops taking new public API access requests on Oct. 31 and, from Jan. 12, 2027, starts removing access for apps and users that have not registered.
- Reddit says more than 14,000 apps and bots have registered, and it is offering migration funding and technical support while it works on remaining gaps in Devvit.
- Old Reddit will be limited to logged-in moderators and logged-in users who have used it recently, with moderators exempt from the recent-use rule.
- Google and OpenAI keep access to Reddit content for their AI products through partnership deals with the company.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost Individual readers who follow subreddits they do not moderate absorb the loss, with no sanctioned substitute for their feeds after Nov. 13, while paying AI partners lose nothing.
- constraint Mod teams that use RSS to push sitewide outage alerts into Discord face the Nov. 13 cutoff without a confirmed equivalent in Reddit's recommended Discord Relay app.
- decision Social listening and research products have until March 2027 to find another route to Reddit data or drop it as a source, and the only route reported is a commercial deal.
- contradiction Mashable reports a six-month recent-use window for Old Reddit and TechCrunch reports 90 days, so people who rely on the classic site cannot yet tell how often they must use it to keep access.
One Reddit user gets an alert for every new post in their subreddits through a Chrome extension called RSS Feed Reeder. "I don't know how I'll do that now on my desktop computer," they wrote after the announcement [6]. Reddit had already answered. "If you use RSS for feeds outside of a community you moderate, there is no replacement," the company wrote [5].
Reddit calls RSS a "common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse" [3]. It gave a similar reason, "abusive scraping and automated traffic," for the new limits on Old Reddit [12]. The support thread describes a notification system. One moderation team pipes Reddit status updates into its Discord. "It's really important for us when we're in the queue and Reddit goes down to get that alert," a commenter wrote, asking whether a developer app could replace it [7]. The company's farewell was warm: "We know RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we're grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit," it wrote [17].
For moderators, the route is Discord Relay, an app on Reddit's Devvit developer platform, and Reddit wants mod teams to review their setups and migrate before Nov. 13 [4][19]. The announcement came on Sept. 30, so teams have 44 days [2][1]. The reports do not say whether Discord Relay can carry a sitewide status alert like the one that commenter described [4][7].
The stated target is scraping. The routes being closed are the free ones, and licensed partners keep theirs [13]. In the second quarter, Reddit's "other revenue" beyond advertising rose 24% from a year earlier to $43 million, up from about $34.7 million [14][2]. TechCrunch reports that figure next to its description of AI licensing as a profitable side business for Reddit [15]. Reddit closed a similar route in August 2025. It restricted the Internet Archive's ability to archive posts, comments and profiles, saying AI companies were collecting its content through the Wayback Machine [18].
Two questions sort any team's Reddit dependencies: whether the feed or tool serves a community the team moderates, and whether a person reads it or software acts on it. I'd inventory the unmoderated, human-read box first, because Reddit's plan gives it no destination. The tradeoff is that the other three boxes all resolve inside Reddit's developer platform or a contract with Reddit, so a team that migrates depends more on Reddit's terms than it did on an open feed [4][9][16].
- Moderated, read by a person: mod alerts move to Discord Relay by Nov. 13 [4]. - Moderated, run by software: bots go to Devvit and register before Jan. 12, 2027, with migration funding on offer [8][9]. - Unmoderated, read by a person: no RSS replacement exists, and Old Reddit will require a login and recent use [5][10]. - Unmoderated, run by software: social listening and research tools lose public API access in March 2027, and the route TechCrunch describes for AI assistants is a commercial deal with Reddit [16].
What to watch
- Whether Reddit settles the Old Reddit recent-use window at six months or 90 days in its own documentation.
- Whether Discord Relay or another Devvit app can deliver sitewide Reddit outage alerts to moderation Discords before Nov. 13.
- Whether social listening and research tools sign data deals with Reddit before public API access ends in March 2027.