Reddit will require you to log in to use old.reddit.com
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I had already deleted my account, and using the site has gotten far more hostile especially without willingness to use the app.
On mobile you now have to use incognito in order to not get cut off and told to download the app.
I guess I can’t complain too much. Old Reddit lost money for, what, a decade? Longer?. Public company Reddit runs a pretty good business.
From the Reddit Post announcing this, :
"In case you are wondering . . .
Q: Is Reddit shutting down Old Reddit? A: Not right now! We can’t promise it will be around forever, but u/spez himself has said we’ll keep supporting it while folks are still using it. That said, it doesn’t have the same modern security tech stack reddit.com has so we need to tighten security on old reddit to keep it viable."[0]
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1ujtebf/logging_in...
This is how you justify it to anyone who doesn’t know web dev.
For those who do, it’s an idiotic statement. The only difference between new Reddit and old Reddit is the visual styling and how content is presented. Both have all the same security.
Having previously recommended on HN that blogs put up a simple basicauth that takes any password to stop AI theft dead in its tracks, I definitely agree with their reasoning; if nothing else, it’ll result in an honest accounting of users left using it.
But I can't stand new Reddit so maybe I'll take this as an opportunity to give it up entirely.
If I did want a near-perfect block I’d post to a telnet BBS and have forums accessible only by QWKmail. Which would of course drive some jerk to synthesize a republish just to troll me. Isn’t humanity wonderful?
But the thing about old.reddit, was you did not need JavaScript to use and browse, which is more secure. Looks more like reddit brass wants to find ways to squeeze old.reddit for more ad pushing and to suck up more user data.
I'm starting to see a pattern here and it starts with reverse demonization, like a begging succubus. you wouldn't want to get hurt now would you. that's not in your best interests. now while you're in a fearful state, please give your responsibility to me. it'll be easier this way, I promise I have your best interests at heart.
Rate limiting by user is much easier said than done for anonymous (not logged in) users. How do you define a user? The same person (or bot) can hop from IP to IP using a number of methodologies on a scale of sohpistication. They can take or leave any cookie you send their way. They can avoid browser fingerprinting and spoof their user agent.
And they literally are using access control. The first step in access control (also known as authorization) is authentication. You can't perform access control on anonymous users, you need to know who you're speaking with.
> I'm not making an account ... I guess I won't be visiting old.reddit threads
That's your choice, of course, but you have to understand you are the least valuable user on Reddit's platform (other than abusers) right? A user who steadfastly refuses to ever log in or give a single concession - what makes you think they care if you never open reddit again? You are indistinguishable from a bot.
Yes I've experienced some very cunning web operators that make mirroring their site really really hard ... it then usually takes some hard determination to work out what is needed to accomplish a successful mirror attempt.
Authorisation just means reddit account details will be added to various sites that, often for free, provide account / password that work atm for those who only want to look at one little old thing without having to make their own account ... so the next thing would be then profiling ... which then takes the whole point of why bother unless the account making process is just a means to deploy scripts that are tracking or some other process ;)
> but you have to understand you are the least valuable user on Reddit's platform ...
Yes along with the other few hundred news sites that all think they are so important they demand yearly subscription from me for access to their site to view at most a couple of articles a year.
As for how important to reddit I personally am - lol. It is though the absence of a number of read only users that will change things ... if at all for the moment. Lurkers though often share interesting threads which could result in other people taking an interest and subsequently engaging. Many people have navigated to old.reddit as it works, unlike the current www.reddit format, doubly so for myself as I cut trackers and various APIS that were not doing the right thing, and reddit's script to display comments displays ... none, nothing, nada, though I do see the OP question / comment.
As for creating a wall though, reddit is very large and has a huge mass of users, but eventually some of the users will move to other areas more tolerant and less interested in capitalising their comments, users which are more interested in sharing their pearls of wisdom or hard gained knowledge with all of the web.
As to a similar situation to Netflix's actions - There's a difference though IMO between a limited amount of choices to consume new tv series and movies vs yet another forum like area ... If one wants to watch a new series or movie, one has to make a choice how that's done ... if an area on the web becomes less than desirable to visit that doesn't have anything unique, there's honestly no absolute need to include it and continue to consume elsewhere, like a tv series that's going down hill fast, for many there's a point they stop and watch something else. So there's no real choice apart from consequential things like evaluating how important a thread from such a place might be that turns up in a search engine if one is looking for answers or whether to engage where a thread from the walled area has been linked, with anything more than superficial banter in such threads outside of the walled site.
Really? How? Be specific.
You never want to participate in discussion, or vote on comments and posts?
I don't really understand how you all were regularly browsing and using the site without an account.
Old is useful for posting to other places, like right here on HN, because the UI is not complete and utter garbage.
Old is also useful for quickly going to a particular sub-reddit if you just want to peruse around to quickly see what the current topics are (/r/worldnews, /r/country-i-live-in, /r/city-i-live-in).
There is probably a point where all these platforms just get to big and can't hang.
the labs crawling for training content + agents have increased traffic 100x.
increased costs yet monetization remains low. no wonder you see firms like Cloudflare proposing x402 micropayments for content.
I'm sure you've seen the "protests" and sub closures because of {$change}. Two weeks later the same mods and users realise they can't get their power trip or dopamine hit from anything else and are back on Reddit - with the mods proudly back working as unpaid janitors for a company with a billion dollars valuation.