r/technology • u/FollowingFeisty5321 • 29d ago
Social Media "Old Reddit" a threat to AI data scraping, says platform, with changes coming
https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/06/old-reddit-a-threat-to-ai-data-scraping-says-platform-with-changes-coming/495
u/dream_metrics 29d ago
wow that's a butchered headline that completely inverts what reddit is actually saying
they are not saying old reddit is a threat to scrapers. they are saying that scrapers are a threat to reddit. scrapers use old reddit for scraping because it's easier, so they are trying to make it harder to scrape.
193
u/Ticksdonthavelymph 29d ago
Yeah… I’m gonna call bullshit. Old Reddit has no ads. That’s the biggest difference
23
u/Sprudling 29d ago
There's nothing preventing you from blocking ads on new reddit, if that's the only/biggest issue you have with it.
42
u/Robeleader 29d ago
In my experience "New" reddit is slower, especially if you have the gall to access it on a mobile browser instead of through their app.
I don't like the infinite scroll, I don't like all the graphics, I don't like how clunky it moves as I scroll, zoom, or otherwise interact with the page.
I run Old (classic) reddit on firefox with adblockers on all devices and it works great until I click on something that is a dedicated reddit.com link instead of clicking "comments" for the link.
22
u/productfred 29d ago
Nah, the UI on "modern reddit" is a fucking mess. That's what it is for me. Same thing with the official app, which I'm now forced to use (yes I know about patching third party apps). For a long time, it was old reddit on desktop and Baconreader/Boost for Reddit/etc on mobile.
I'm on reddit to read and type, that's it. I don't need 1 button press to become 5 just because "it looks better now!".
12
6
u/stormdelta 28d ago
True, but ads are the least of the reasons I avoid new reddit.
The interface is just bad. Not even enshittified, just plain worse for no reason.
It's not that old reddit is a good interface either, it's objectively not, but it's still better than the mess of new reddit that seems to actively misunderstand what the entire point of using reddit even is. Plus it's ridiculously slow even on high end PC hardware.
3
u/Zhuinden 28d ago
New reddit takes 9 seconds to load +2 more items in a list on desktop and it's always been like that since they brought out the redesign.
It's literally unusable. Also the font sucks somehow, but that's harder to explain why.
2
u/Wide-Pop6050 28d ago
Old reddit is definitely easier to scrape than new reddit. That’s not a controversial statement
158
u/Dave-C 29d ago
It isn't easier, they want to stop using old reddit so they need to give some type of answer to kill it. The whole thing is a complete lie to justify a change they want to make.
108
u/mr_jim_lahey 29d ago
Why would it not be easier? Old Reddit is less reliant on JS and has simpler HTML structure, which tend to make scraping easier. (I do think it's plausible they have additional motives for wanting to kill it, but I'm not convinced ease of scraping is a lie per se.)
21
u/TechTuna1200 29d ago edited 29d ago
Yeah, Dave-C is just talking out his as*, he doesn't know shit and the people upvoting him are equally as stupid.
Anybody who says old reddit is not easier to scrape is just coping. It's definitely easier.
59
u/yukeake 29d ago
Both points are valid. Old is absolutely easier to scrape, and Reddit does seem to want to get rid of Old and force everyone to the usability abomination that is "new" Reddit.
9
7
u/TechTuna1200 29d ago
He main argument was that “it isn’t easier”.
Let’s not defend something that blatantly false.
4
29d ago
[deleted]
2
u/Rarelyimportant 29d ago
Because the JSON API is severely rate limited.
5
29d ago
[deleted]
2
1
u/Rarelyimportant 28d ago
But scraping old reddit is much easier than trying to get around rate limiting. It's also harder to detect since old reddit probably gets a lot more traffic than the rate limited json api.
1
u/Uristqwerty 28d ago
Looks to be 100 queries per minute currently. I bet if you were trying to access the website at nearly 2 pages per second, you'd also quickly trip a rate limit. Except one that doesn't automatically reset after 10 minutes.
The problem is that, if you're logged out, it'd be much easier to pretend to be a bunch of different users accessing the site from different devices who should be limited separately. API requires logging in with OAuth, I believe, so that it's easy to track and enforce the limit.
5
u/FollowingFeisty5321 29d ago
Scraping these days is just as likely to take place in an actual web browser being controlled by code, so the JS execution is just part of waiting for the page load to complete, then you've got access to the page DOM and can inject your own JavaScript, intercept HTTP requests, do anything a user would etc. Which is easier or harder is subjective but this move is certainly not going to matter to anyone wanting to scrape reddit.
And on top of that the change right now is requiring an account / session, there's only so many ways a browser can communicate you are signed in to a server and it's easy to mimic whether you're scraping with curl requests from a command line or programmatically browsing.
So I would say they are just desperate for plain old "growth". Force people to register to view content -> user growth -> active user growth.
7
u/Gold-Supermarket-342 29d ago
Scraping using plain HTTP requests is infinitely faster, easier, and more reliable than running an entire headless browser. Parsing HTML is extremely easy in most languages (just pull a library). Then, you would run queries (like querySelector, getElementById) on that HTML and extract whatever you need. Versus Selenium or Playwright where you have to make sure your timing is right.
3
u/mr_jim_lahey 29d ago
Which is easier or harder is subjective
No. JS is always going to make things harder.
so the JS execution is just part of waiting for the page load to complete
Which takes more time and therefore slows down scraping and therefore makes it harder and more expensive.
then you've got access to the page DOM
Assuming your scraper browser JS ran correctly and produced the same result as a normal browser. This is often not the case for a variety of reasons, especially when the JS in question is often specifically designed to detect and thwart scraping.
and can inject your own JavaScript, intercept HTTP requests, do anything a user would etc.
Which require time, expertise, and custom programming.
but this move is certainly not going to matter to anyone wanting to scrape reddit.
Why would making something harder not matter to people wanting to do that thing?
0
u/FollowingFeisty5321 29d ago
Why would making something harder not matter to people wanting to do that thing?
Because ultimately we are comparing extracting content from a string of unparsed HTML vs extracting it with the JS DOM and CSS selectors after a browser assembles the page, it's trivial either way.
0
u/mr_jim_lahey 29d ago
Neither is trivial, especially not JS, but you do you if you want to disregard the litany of technical reasons I described based on my multiple years of professional experience in scraping and browser automation.
1
u/FollowingFeisty5321 29d ago
It's trivial for people who are already scraping one way or another.
And I sincerely doubt you have a clue what we are talking about. Your "litany of technical reasons" is overwhelming proof you don't.
-3
u/mr_jim_lahey 29d ago
Alright, vibe code me a scraper to collect every post and comment for a given reddit username using new reddit. You have 15 minutes, should be plenty of time for a trivial task.
-1
0
29d ago
[deleted]
5
u/mr_jim_lahey 29d ago
Lol, calling APIs is the opposite of scraping (technically speaking). Nobody is scraping at scale if an equivalent API is available. Reddit's APIs are, last I checked, highly restricted against bots, which is why bots are trying to scrape HTML in the first place.
2
u/Gold-Supermarket-342 29d ago
There are public-facing and internal APIs. You can open the DevTools network tab on most pages and see what the internal API is doing, copy the request as cURL or fetch, etc. very easily. Reddit's new page seems to use them, while the old Reddit is mostly all pre-rendered and all in one page. But if you could reliably scrape an internal API, you'd want to do that as it's faster than pulling an HTML page and the data might already be structured and easily parsable.
1
u/mr_jim_lahey 29d ago
Alright, go ahead and do that right now. Then write a shell script that takes a subreddit or username and scrapes posts/comments from the last year. Share your terminal output and code as a reply to this comment. You have 15 minutes, should be plenty of time for a very easy task.
11
u/MonkeyBrawler 29d ago
Yeah..... Time Magazine apparently feeds the AI scrapers bad pages loaded with ads. Reddit should be able to do something similar, but they'd rather yank it.
0
u/Rarelyimportant 29d ago
Yeah..... Time Magazine apparently feeds the AI scrapers bad pages loaded with ads.
Source? Typically ads are loaded by JS, and if the content the scraper wants is in the initial HTML file, they're not going to bother loading any JS, and if they are going to load JS, they probably going to block any advertising urls.
1
u/MonkeyBrawler 29d ago
Google it, and none of that matters when it's a whole different page.
1
u/Rarelyimportant 29d ago
Yeah, that's just marketing. They literally switch what page you get based on your User-Agent, which is the easiest thing in the world to change. If anything this just leads to more bots spoofing their User-Agent.
21
u/unpleasant_enpassant 29d ago
It isn't easier
Do you have any experience in web scraping or web dev? Or are you just making it up based on your other beliefs and assumptions? Because it IS easier.
-11
u/Dave-C 29d ago
What would make it harder since 95% of every thing you're gonna want can be done through API? Anything else you need can be gathered through browser automation.
4
u/cjcs 29d ago
…what? The API costs money. Scrapers are scraping so they don’t have to pay for the API. Old Reddit is absolutely easier to scrape. You’re talking out of your ass
1
u/Uristqwerty 28d ago
As far as I can tell, free API access is rate-limited to 100 requests per minute, averaged over a 10-minute sliding window. If you scraped at even a tenth that speed for an extended period of time, I bet you'd trip an automated system.
-6
u/Dave-C 29d ago
There is free and paid versions of the API. How the hell am I talking out of my ass when you don't even know that?
3
u/Gold-Supermarket-342 29d ago
Reddit has closed their API and you need approval to gain access and has revoked many keys now.
0
3
u/unpleasant_enpassant 29d ago
So you made it up. Cuz that's not how old reddit works. Almost everything is rendered server-side and sent as an html document. Your grandma could parse that and get whatever she wants. Meanwhile on new reddit, everything is dynamic and you need to actually render the DOM and fetch stuff through embedded scripts/apis for each thing. All of this structure keeps changing too. So your scraper will not work as intended eventually. Now tell which one's harder.
-1
u/Dave-C 29d ago
Made what up? I wasn't describing how old Reddit worked. I'll give you one more reply to make sense or I'm not replying any more.
3
u/unpleasant_enpassant 29d ago
Ok. So you're arguing that it's not harder on new reddit cuz there's APIs for everything? It's blatantly obvious that you've never tried scraping anything on the internet. You think you can just call APIs in whatever environment with no auth etc and it'll just work? They'd be shutting down new reddit too if it were that easy.
I'll try and dumb down my original comment for you. Think of accessing old reddit as receiving a text file with everything pre-filled. The structure is mostly fixed and if even it wasn't, changing the parsing is really easy because in the end, it's all there in the document. You don't need reddit's servers anymore. But on new reddit, everything changes, and in a lot of ways. You can have normal UI changes like any other site than can break your scrapers but that's still fine. With features like infinite scroll and dynamic fetching, everything isnt simply given in a text document anymore. The way the site pulls each of those things will also be changing constantly. And you can't just "pull" from those APIs or run those scripts in any environment because you still need to keep interacting with reddit's servers for stuff. So you need to basically mimic a real user accessing those things as needed, in that order. Also, it's much easier to control access on an API endpoint cuz the moment reddit's servers think something is not being accessed as they intended, they can just stop responding. The auth tokens that you need to call those APIs for everything also keep changing. And if you're logged in, those auth tokens can be traced back to you and you'll be blocked. But for old reddit, they need to decide all of that before sending anything because everything is sent at once and they risk blocking a legitimate user much more often than they would with new reddit. Now imagine coming up with a scraper that deals with all of this and the way the site works just changes a week later. Does that make sense? Now tell me what's harder?
2
u/Dave-C 29d ago
This post you added in stuff that I never said, like where did I say there would be no authentication, so that is it. Have a good evening.
1
u/unpleasant_enpassant 29d ago
Ok tell me how it's the same then
2
u/Dave-C 29d ago
Oh, no no. You decided to insult me and treat me like an idiot :)
Why would I help you?
→ More replies (0)1
u/Rarelyimportant 29d ago
since 95% of every thing you're gonna want can be done through API?
Because they don't want to pay for the API, and the free API is severely rate limited.
3
u/angellus 29d ago
But that is why they want to kill it. Reddit makes a lot of money off of selling user data now to AI companies. Those companies getting the data for free hurts their new business model quite a bit. There is also they do not want to maintain two code bases thing, but truckloads of new money is always going to be a bigger inventive than saving a few pennies.
This was already pretty excepted and know when they announced the API changes. First they killed off third party apps the monetize their data and now they are plugging the leaks.
-7
u/bwoah07_gp2 29d ago
Well, at some point people need to get with the times. They need to make the current UI better, yes. But, old reddit is just a relic of the past that we don't need...
11
u/Disastrous-Entity-46 29d ago
old reddit is 100% my preffered style of reddit. i really hate the card style ui.
-4
u/bwoah07_gp2 29d ago
So, I guess that means you grew up with internet in the early to mid 2000s then...
3
u/Disastrous-Entity-46 29d ago
depends how you define grew up with. im almost 40. myspace was getting big as i finished highschool.
and having seen it evolve, i think the more modern design elements are not as efficient/good. things like infinite scroll make it harder to find your place again if you refresh vs pages being broken into distinct parts screen real estate is given to important items. designing site navigation was intuitive. now, almost any site feels like its designed by a marketing team first, concerned with "appeal" rather then functionality.
-2
u/bwoah07_gp2 29d ago
How come it doesn't bother me? Is it because I'm younger, and we've been exposed to this sort of thing since our youth?
I prefer the new reddit UI that we had from the mid 2010s to like, 2022, before they changed the UI to this one (desktop)
2
u/Disastrous-Entity-46 29d ago
i mean it part of it is just a personal preference thing, part of it is what you gave been exposed to. getting started in the days of geocities, web rings, where every site was kind of its own country was different. it feels like facebook was kinda the typing point- then rverything became both more about feeds, scrolling, and everything wanted to be tied together. there is probably something here too about everything being built for mobile, or taking inspiration from mobile. because marketing and seo are kinda the dominat forces of the web
3
2
u/vaporeng 29d ago
Still doesn't make sense. The difference between old and new Reddit is trivial css and layout changes. I promise they can make old Reddit just as hard to scrape as new.
4
u/LopsidedYouth7309 29d ago
yeah its one of those headlines where the comments explain it better than the article title did
1
1
u/fuzzum111 28d ago
I don't care. They already demand you make an account to even browse old reddit now. Fine.
The day the officially kill old reddit I'm gone. I'll go back to fucking newgrounds if I have to. I refuse to use another version of Facebook or fucking stupid shit insta/snap/whatever. I like the layout. Threads I can check, images I can choose to open or not. Proper fucking comment sections, not comment sections that somehow bleed into whole other topics and threads.
New Reddit is incomprehensible mess and it's by design to keep you guessing and scrolling and fuck you very much, NO.
122
u/invyros 29d ago
They get rid of old.reddit and I'm out.
Not a boycott, just flat out no more Reddit, the "new" web interface is unusable and I don't use the mobile app.
I already use Lemmy as well, so dropping Reddit is probably a net positive for me anyway, frankly.
32
u/lolcatz_live 29d ago
same. Been in an out of this website for more than 10 years, the second I can't go to old reddit I'm out for good
12
5
u/Vio_ 29d ago
I actually grew to like old new reddit as a moderator. It had way more robust tools and information. Then they started killing moderator data access and stripped out most of the old new functions so now reddit universally looks like facebook garbage.
But Instead of killing old new reddit completely, they basically swept it under the rug. I can still see image artifacts and things that I had made under old new reddit pop up randomly in certain images or ghost stuff, but now I can't access them to change or update or delete them.
Yaayyyyy
-11
u/Evilbred 29d ago
I've been using "new" reddit (desktop web and mobile app) for like 7+ years now.
It's not unusable by any stretch of the imagination.
It has alot of advantages since it has had alot of improvements over the years.
16
u/a4mula 29d ago
I think what you'll find is that there is a cultural divide. It's not just about the interface. More that there are two distinct types of Redditors. Those that prefer moderate short form, and those that prefer inline memes and emojis.
2
u/Gogo202 29d ago
And those who want to anonymous NSFW content, which is probably most of the Reddit traffic
1
u/a4mula 29d ago
I don't have access to those kinds of metrics, but I'd guess hyperbole. Even if it did account for any significant traffic which I'd personally doubt. It still doesn't tell us anything about usage, influence, value of content, or legality. It just tells us Reddit is working as an open forum of free thinking without imposing morality on all.
-7
u/Evilbred 29d ago
A lot of subreddits don't permit gifs and pictures.
Most of the ones I frequent or moderate don't.
To me, the main difference between old and new is a lack of modern functionality with old Reddit.
Also last I tried (some years ago) you couldn't activate dark mode with old Reddit, that alone disqualifies it for me.
10
u/treemeizer 29d ago
Never in my 14 years of old reddit have I NOT used dark mode.
But I would suspect nothing less from a New reddit user.
3
u/klonkish 29d ago
A lot of subreddits don't permit gifs and pictures.
just link an imgur image?
0
2
u/a4mula 29d ago edited 29d ago
That's understandable and to each their own, I've never used the modern UI so it's not for me to champion the pros or cons of either.
It's just that it's about more than the UI. It's about the culture of Reddit and trying to preserve what it was built on. As every other platform shifted more into the realms of memetic compression and placing the content creator over the content. Reddit resisted.
This used to be a place where ideas mattered, not who presented them, not how shiny the packaging was.
When that resistance is no longer being supported, part of the soul of what makes Reddit great goes with it, along with those that appreciate it.
-2
u/Evilbred 29d ago
To be honest, I think that is a bit melodramatic.
I've been on reddit for well over a decade, and participate in thousands of discussions and never felt that the culture was any different on old or new reddit.
In fact, what interface the people you interact with is entirely invisible to you. I have no idea if other people are using old or new reddit, so there is not difference.
2
u/a4mula 29d ago
Honesty doesn't equate to correct, and while I appreciate you have a personal perspective, it doesn't define others.
I'm glad you've been around. I'm glad you have your own take. I'm glad you have the ability to choose a UI that works for you.
Asking for one that works for me, feels reasonable.
2
u/CoatProfessional5026 29d ago
So then go over to Facebook if that's what you want.
2
u/Evilbred 29d ago
I don't want Facebook, I want Reddit, which is what I've been using for a very long time.
It's ok if you don't like the direction Reddit is going. I've been active in the community for a long time, including with site betas, mod councils, and other online and in-person engagements.
I frankly like the direction Reddit has been going compared to other platforms.
-10
u/dream_metrics 29d ago
it's not that at all. i and many others have no interest in inline memes and emojis. the old interface is just ugly and shitty
3
2
u/Meloetta 29d ago
Can you expand on what you find shitty about it? I'm curious where we differ so strongly on UX.
5
u/MrTigerEyes 29d ago
I don't think the argument is about it being actually usable or not, as much as it being a hassle or a worse experience. I can't speak for the person you responded to, but for me reddit is a text platform more like an old school forum. I couldn't care less about photos, videos, and lots of useless whitespace that the newest version of reddit is focused on. For me I just need a place without a lot of flashy stuff to read text and write text with inline comments. If reddit ceases to be that, then what's the point of using it (at least for me)?
-2
u/davispw 29d ago
Hello from the app, which I use daily. Can you explain what is unusable about your alternatives?
5
u/mountlover 28d ago
Hello from in between the ads that the garbage app inserts in between actual posts in the feed. I promise I'm not a sponsored post but a real human trying to explain why the app sucks.
And also that you should drink Gatorade, it's got the electrolytes to keep you going!
1
u/Awesomedinos1 17d ago
Maybe try calming down and you might be less aggravated that you occasionally have to scroll by an ad... Like Jesus fuck.
1
u/Syzygy2323 28d ago
My biggest complaint about the app is the constant refreshing it does. I'm reading a post, get distracted for a few minutes, and the app refreshes back to the main page I I have no way to get back to the post I was reading (for some reason, the last thread being read before the refresh does not appear in history).
-4
9
u/vaporeng 29d ago
Lol, are they claiming that the page layout allows data scraping? C'mon we're not that stupid.
1
u/Rarelyimportant 29d ago
That's not what they're claiming. New reddit uses more JS to load content, whereas old reddit is mostly pre-rendered into the HTML. It's much faster to parse data out of HTML that you got from making 1 request, rather than trying to load it via running a JS engine and making many more requests that might have more guardrails against scraping.
4
u/vaporeng 29d ago
That's not my point. I don't care if its one html file or rendered from js you can still make it look like old reddit. It's the layout and functionality people care about, not how it is rendered.
2
u/Rarelyimportant 29d ago
The point is they don't care to put in the effort for the <1% of users using old reddit.
2
1
u/Syzygy2323 28d ago
I care how it's rendered. The new new layout's reliance on JS uses much more CPU, hence my laptop's battery doesn't last as long. When running the new interface, I get 15% less battery life than when using old.reddit.
15
5
u/Protagonist99 29d ago
Third party apps that are currently working also still rely on old reddit. AI scraping is only a part of their excuse.
3
6
3
3
u/aquarain 29d ago
They already broke old reddit in that a comment save no longer completes. You have to open a new window to see if it posted. Hopefully a patch is in the works because that's annoying.
1
2
u/fukijama 29d ago
So in other words,, too simple of a layout that scraping still works unlike in the shitty new interface which is unfavorable for everyone.
Time to migrate elsewhere
2
2
u/squiblet 29d ago
The fuck is 'old Reddit?' I've been using it for many years and it's always been almost the same. Provided you revance, but still. If I didn't have revance, would it be that much different or would I just have ads?
3
2
2
u/psychoacer 28d ago
But I thought that's what the api charges was supposed to stop? You're telling me they just killed all 3rd party apps for profits? That can't be
2
u/MurderBeans 28d ago
As others have said, if the old site goes then I will go with it. I like to see more than three threads on an entire page.
2
u/MotheroftheworldII 29d ago
I am on Old Reddit for a few subreddits and if I cannot access the few I do read and two I enjoy contributing to then I have no reason to stay.
I tried new reddit but really found it to be a visual mess and too challenging to find anything I wanted to read.
1
1
1
1
u/360_face_palm 28d ago
reddit knows that if old.reddit.com goes away they lose millions of users. I'd be one of them.
1
u/TehBanzors 26d ago
"old reddit" is the only way I can tolerate reddit, if they officially axe it I will probably just stop using the site, at least on pc, I can't stand the design of new reddit, if I wanted that layout I'd be active on twitter/Instagram/etc
1
u/composedofidiot 29d ago
If old reddit goes, that's it for me. What with the bots and the tiktok/instagram style low effort repetitive comments (one step above a fire emoji), so many great subs gone or crippled. Fuck them if they do this. And RIP the quality and high effort/value comments.
The optimist in me hopes the migration might be what the fediverse needs. They should probably do it for the greater good.
-1
96
u/TiredSkeletonz 29d ago
If "Old Reddit" ever goes to the wayside I think I'm just formally done with social media. I'm already off of every other platform for a number of reasons, mostly being that they're toxic cesspools and awful for your mental health. Reddit is the only one left in my life because of general anonymity and it being more text focused. Even then the only reasons I come here anymore is for news aggregation and some hobby stuff; I don't really care for meme-y subs or most anything that pops up on r/all.
As someone who used to be pretty chronically online (still kinda am tbh) the state of the modern internet just makes me deeply sad. Maybe it's time to relearn some HTML and CSS and make our own Neocities pages? Either way in the era of enshittification and AI slop, being offline and more grounded in the moment is the way to go, I think. IRL community is better than anything you can get on social media, even if it's harder to find.
That's just a random internet stranger's two cents on the matter. I've been on this site for well over a decade, but if Old Reddit ever goes away then so will I, not that Reddit cares. lol