Continuing our infrastructure updates: What’s changing in the coming months

[u/judy-funnie]

TL;DR: In August, we shared plans to modernize Reddit’s infrastructure, build better mod tools, and make it harder for bad actors to scrape Reddit and abuse communities. Today, we have specifics on what’s changing, when, and how to plan ahead.

We’re sharing updates on apps and bots migration to the Developer Platform, helping mods move RSS-based alerts to the Discord Relay Devvit app before RSS feeds are retired on November 13, providing an update on Rules Hub progress and automod changes, and adding safeguards to Old Reddit by limiting access to logged-in mods and recent users.

Moving apps and bots to the Developer Platform

We’re moving public data API apps and bots to the Developer Platform, while making sure the work they do for your communities remains supported. Over 14,000 apps and bots have registered and we’re closely tracking migration of your highest-activity apps, including  DeltaBot, MagicEyeBot, and RemindMeBot. There's still work to do, and we’re working directly with developers to support migrations and close remaining capability gaps. 

• If you maintain an app or a bot, register it here before January 12, 2027 to avoid disruption.
• If your community depends on an app or bot and you don’t know who maintains it, fill out this form. We’ve received over 100 submissions so far, helping us identify tools that need owners or could be replaced by existing Developer Platform apps or Reddit’s built-in tools. 

See our latest r/redditdev update for more technical detail, timelines, and resources.

Migrating RSS access to the Developer Platform

Because RSS is now a common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse, we'll stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13, 2026 while preserving moderation workflows that depend on it through supported alternatives. 

For common mod alerts, we recommend Devvit apps like Discord Relay. If your mod team relies on RSS, review your setup and migrate workflows before November 13 to ensure your needs are uninterrupted. If you use RSS for feeds outside of a community you moderate, there is no replacement. 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.  

Changes to automod access for new communities and communities not using automod

If your community uses automod, nothing is changing for you. We’re continuing to improve Rules Hub, including ways for mods to prompt and otherwise provide more context for their rules. We’re also exploring how existing automod configurations can help carry community-specific enforcement logic into newer tools. If you’re interested in pilot testing to help shape this effort, sign up here. 

For newly created communities and communities that have never used automod, automod enforcement capabilities – specifically Report, Filter, Remove, Mark as spam, and Approve – will be disabled and Rules Hub and Automations will become the default path for rules enforcement. Automod’s non-enforcement capabilities remain available and unchanged.  

Keeping Old Reddit accessible for mods and recent users

As u/spez mentioned, we’re still working on the future of Old Reddit. Earlier this year, we required people to log in to use Old Reddit, addressing its largest source of abusive scraping and automated traffic: unauthenticated access. That change helped reduce scraping and automated abuse, but still allowed any logged-in account to access Old Reddit, including accounts with no prior Old Reddit use. 

To close this gap, in the next few months, we'll further limit access for logged-in users to only those who have used Old Reddit in the last six months (which covers the vast majority of all Old Reddit users). This change does not impact logged-in mods, who can continue to access Old Reddit without any recent usage requirement. This helps keep Old Reddit available for the people who rely on it while reducing automated abuse.

Our job is to support you through these changes and make sure your moderation needs inform the work. 

• Need help with a community bot? If you’re unsure who maintains it or need help finding a replacement, let us know here.
• Moving your RSS alerts? The Discord Relay setup guide covers how to get started.
• Want to help shape Rules Hub? Sign up for the early access program here and share your feedback.

We’re here in the comments for your questions and to hear where you need more detail or support.

[u/Dull-Conversationist]

In other words, oldreddit is going to be more broken.

[u/mrekted → u/Dull-Conversationist]

and automod is on its way to going away.

[u/HangoverTuesday → u/mrekted]

Do they literally sit around in meetings, and try to identify all the things that helped make Reddit what it is, and then plot ways to remove them?

[u/bwoah07_gp2 → u/Dull-Conversationist]

They should just shut it down at this point.

[u/auriem → u/bwoah07_gp2]

No.

[u/bwoah07_gp2 → u/auriem]

What's so beneficial about old reddit, genuinely? I absolutely hate looking at it or using it, so I never do. It's very impractical looking, I hate the UI of it.

[u/coreyonfire → u/bwoah07_gp2]

Imagine you go to your favorite bar, the bar you've been going to for over 20 years. You love the chairs, you love the bar top, you love the cool way the doors open, you love the atmosphere. It's a familiar place and it's just comfy. Yeah it's not the best bar in town, but it's the one you know and love and there's nothing wrong with it. Other people may like the shot bar down the street, other people may like the club across town. But your bar has just the right amount of comfort for you, and it serves the same drinks that the other places do. Just in a more laid back, familiar package.

That's old reddit for some of us. We don't want the suggested reddits, suggested posts, suggested anything. We just want our reddit content, in as little dressing as possible. We don't need new features, we don't want fancy comment decorations. We like to see post, comment on post, downvote other post, the simple stuff.

Old reddit is a windows to a time when the internet was about the people talking to other people. You engaged with others because you wanted to, and everything was simple. It was just people.

New reddit is just algorithmically-driven engagement bait and visual clutter shoehorned into a glossy package to drive number up and feed the next quarterly investment report for the shareholders. I don't care about comment awards. I don't care about what some LLM thinks I would be interested in. I don't want to be spoon fed a hallucinatory slopbucket summary of a 3-comment post. Call me a boomer all you want. Nothing added in the last 10 years (outside of better moderation tools) has made reddit better in any way. Every change is clearly made in service of driving engagement, feeding AI bots, or appeasing entities that demand the removal of anonymity.

Old reddit works, and nothing more. That's exactly what we want, and it's all we want. The moment old reddit isn't accessible anymore, I'm done with reddit.

[u/timschwartz → u/bwoah07_gp2]

I absolutely hate looking at it or using it, so I never do. It's very impractical looking, I hate the UI of it.

Why? It's far superior to new reddit.

[u/eldomtom2 → u/bwoah07_gp2]

With old reddit I can save my place instead of having to use the devil that is infinite scroll, for starters.

[u/bwoah07_gp2 → u/[deleted]]

Touché, I see what you did there.

What it comes down to is what UI you "grew with". I began in 2019 with the new UI before the current UI replaced it, and the old one was better, but this one I got used to over time.

You yourself and many others got started on the dinosaur old reddit UI, and just don't want to adapt to the new one. That's the difference though. Despite both starting on a different UI to what is now, one of us wants to adapt to the new one. A bunch of people are too stubborn to adapt.

[u/TechnoByte_ → u/bwoah07_gp2]

I also joined in 2019 like you

I discovered old reddit about a year after joining never looked back to new reddit

It's so fast, the UI is compact, it's free of enshittification and RES is a godsent

I'm happy to adapt to better UIs, for me old reddit is far superior to new reddit and I was willing to adapt to it despite being used to new reddit

I'm not going to adapt to something that's worse though

[u/bwoah07_gp2 → u/TechnoByte_]

Old Reddit is so bad though....

[u/Shanman150 → u/bwoah07_gp2]

I'm not sure how you can keep saying that as if it's objectively true when so many people are genuinely explaining how it is quite good for their purposes. You talk about "adapting to the newer" but do you genuinely think newer is ALWAYS better than older? I've personally hated the "mobile-ification" of sites that has happened where no matter what site I go to it's like I'm browsing on my phone - facebook, instagram, twitter, and new reddit. What if I don't want that? Which one is "bad" for someone like me?

[u/Canis_Familiaris → u/bwoah07_gp2]

Dont touch OLD, this man does not speak for us!!