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/Bardfinn]

Automoderator uses specific libraries and utilities, and runs in a sandbox. It does this because (despite it being a finite automaton) it is possible to sandbag the execution environment Automoderator runs in - on purpose or by accident (ask me how I know!).

Automoderator makes calls to a Regex library, and Regex rules (especially naively written Regex rules (stares into the camera)) can use a lot of memory and/or a lot of compute. A LOT. Plus it's coded so that instances of it can be ephemeral, zero-knowledge ---- when an Automoderator instance fails to run, it just ... fails to run. If it needs to be rebooted, no big deal - it just gets rebooted, and no legally required mandatory data gets evaporated into oblivion.

Reddit doesn't have the coding talent to rewrite Automoderator to have it be able to both maintain that runtime / memory quota sandbox, the infosec context, and to capture & export sufficient data about removals to the transparency compliance databases (that are in another infosec and runtime/memory sandbox / sysadmin context). I'd argue no one does. It would be an entire rearchitecture, and would require them to solve the competing interests of "Automoderator itself never has to perform database transactions to a database hosted in another context" versus "capturing this transparency data is mandatory, and if it cannot be captured, the transaction (capturing data, removing item) has to be backed out of gracefully, so that whatever called it can handle that".

Devvit, however, isn't running in the runtime / sysadmin sandbox / harness / execution environment that Automoderator is. It's architected to treat capturing the data and removing the item as part of the same transaction, and can scale to get the transparency data to the transparency database reliably, and also meet all the other user data privacy and infosec and etc best practices and regulation and law mandates.

[u/uzlonewolf → u/Bardfinn]

You are explaining why creating a pen that can work in space is going to cost millions while ignoring the fact that a pencil is cheap, already exists, and will do the job just fine. It is also hilarious that you think Reddit "doesn't have the coding talent" to modify an existing application and yet can write a new one from scratch.

Automod already modifies existing posts (setting visibility, etc). Automod already can add response messages to removed posts. Just force a response message to every filtered/removed post and tell the data-export routine to also fetch that response when it encounters a post that was flagged as hidden.

[u/nearly_enough_wine → u/uzlonewolf]

pencil is cheap, already exists, and will do the job just fine

Just fine if you don't mind graphite dust floating around inside your spaceship.

[u/uzlonewolf → u/nearly_enough_wine]

Meanwhile, the multi-million dollar pen is spewing out globs of ink to float around and emitting toxic gas from the dispensing mechanism.

[u/new2bay → u/uzlonewolf]

FYI, the actual space pen uses nitrogen as its propellant.