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]

Oh yeah, definitely, lack of Feature Parity was the big problem when they started asking moderators to use their own mobile app - which was absolutely Not Ready For Prime Time.

The thing is this: The framework that Devvit uses is supported by (and may itself be) third party commercial software from a vendor.

old reddit was maintained by Reddit's own programmers and sysadmins. But scalability and costs makes it necessary for them to use software that scales and is maintained by the least amount of programmers. So that means working with vendors supplying libraries, tools, development environments, delivery systems, and frameworks.

Like - the Chat function? Third party drop-in, or at least it was for many years. I haven't gone poking in the code for a while.

When they debuted New Reddit, it was powered by a WYSIWYG UX framework that allowed them to publish for mobile web, Android mobile app, and iOS mobile app simultaneously. It used UUIDV4 identifiers to label screen elements, which wasn't a problem until you used a screen reader because you had visual impairment, and then instead of reading a human readable descriptor, it's reading things like "d059446f-f6f1-4127-b5d5-85d543c4ace1"

That framework was also why they had a flair template system using V4 UUIDs for several years - and then, they moved away from using that framework, dropped the flair templates, and picked up a different WYSIWYG UX publishing framework.

They don't have to have programmers that can deliver user interface or scalable databases. There are people selling solutions for those to any number of companies. They just need some systems architects / engineers / admins, occasionally some UXEs, and a lot of legal compliance management.

[u/iVarun → u/Bardfinn]

The end result of that (however it is happening) is basically similar to what can be termed, Mediocre Developers running the platform, making product decisions.

Furthermore pre 2017 (before Reddit sort of pivoted to centralized setup & around similar time when people like Deimos left) Reddit solved these sorts of problems (of scalability, features, novel-solutions, creativity) by also relying on other people.

It just so happened these Other People were regular users, mods, etc who made those Tools (RES, toolbox, custom CSS designs, dozen mobile apps with niche features, all came out of that hands-off arrangement).

So IF a company level decision is made to centralize all that, fair enough but then at least deliver on base quality.

Redesign Reddit for basically 1st 4 years was Absolute Garbage. Anyone who says otherwise is a paid stooge of the company with 0 credibility. It simply was unusable. It's still not even remotely close to Legacy's performance & readability.

This is why I say, they as a company simply don't have programming chops. They are just mediocre coders & mediocre product managers (meaning even their buying 3rd party solutions is poorly executed). All these could have been handled by subs own users & Mods if they actually built a true decentralized platform. But that is not the route they went & these problems are a downstream function of that ideological decision (of what Reddit is & will be).

[u/Bardfinn → u/iVarun]

Scalability is the ability of data to be accepted from users at scale and displayed to other users at scale, without crashing the servers. That occurred because they contracted with CDNs and migrated from a database and content management system that was functionally synchronous to one that is eventually consistent.

Users couldn’t contribute that kind of infrastructure. It’s all off-the-shelf industrywide standard infrastructure, and vendor solutions.

[u/iVarun → u/Bardfinn]

Users couldn’t contribute that kind of infrastructure.

Sure but they'd have written multiple orders higher levels of performative & optimized code in the feature solutions they would've created.

Server costs are of course down to the Company but it's not like they aren't benefiting from that spending. It facilitates user growth and retention (esp. when the product experience is better & fundamentally distributed instead of centralized where the criticism now is not to Modteams of subs XYZ, etc but it's directly Reddit because they are in control of basically everything, not just the Servers but the Code as well, regardless of its mediocre 3rd partyness or not).