They Killed Old Reddit | Hacker News Reader

They Killed Old Reddit

old.reddit.com

37 pointspluc31 comments

Old reddit still works for me; however, ten minutes ago I encountered - for the first time ever - a mandatory signup modal on new reddit. The only options for viewing the thread without an account were old reddit, or DOM manipulation. They are definitely moving, and the writing is on the wall - no more anonymous reddit access, going forward.

Looking forward to nitter-style reddit proxies springing up so we can actually read the information freely contributed by decades of unpaid volunteers.

redlib is a thing and has been around for a while.

https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib-instances/blob/main/ins...

It seems to work fine here. Just be aware that you need to go into the site settings and re‑enable Old Reddit (even if it’s already enabled, you have to toggle it again). They did that some time ago, and it doesn't "remember" your preference if you use a fresh browser session.

nope. this has to do with not being logged in. you used to go to old.reddit.com without being logged in.

That's gone now.

I'm not logged in and I still get old reddit. It depends on where you are.

yes, I forgot to add they're slow rolling this so all the non-users can't streisand effect them into feeling bad.

I’ve found it depends on where I connect from. If I’m using my home WiFi, it works. If I use 4G or a VPN, I get the login prompt. Still seems to work on my WiFi at the moment.

There was an album by the Dead Kennedys called "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death!"--an homage to the Patrick Henry battle cry--and I often recall its sentiments while reading HN comments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty_or_give_me_dea...!

I love that DK album! However, I think the comments here are more of the Patrick Henry "give me liberty" sentiment than the Dead Kennedys "give me convenience" one. The Internet has been on a trajectory of increased centralization, login walls, and removal of anonymity, even for read-only content. That is driven by companies protecting their competitive advantage of decades-old UGC that exists on their platform from scrapers and AI companies, which is their right, but it definitely is corrosive to the spirit of the (old) Internet, and of the publicly indexable forums that inspired Reddit. Information wants to be free.

Why the fuck people keep using Reddit (including myself) I still can't fathom. Maybe the lack of alternatives?

Reddit is actively trying to "kill the Internet" turning itself into a garbage pile of short window relevance. Whatever you see at any moment may have a meaning at that exact time and never again. I can never sight something on my phone and then immediately switch to my laptop and hope to quickly find it there too. If you want to find something older than two weeks - forget it. Why the fuck they made it so hard to search even through your own fucking comments?

Sharing a link to a thread often is a pointless thing - by the time one finishes typing a comment, the thread might get closed and all your elaborate prose and thinking turns into useless, throwaway garbage.

I lost my Reddit account because I once answered someone's comment while I was connected to a VPN - turns out that violates something. They've shadow-banned me without even notifying. I kept posting comments and didn't even realize - nobody could even see them. I spent three weeks trying to revive it - everything I sent to the support went to the void - no indication of anyone ever seeing my plea. All the content and traffic I have generated for them (for free), over the years was all for nothing. All the useful tips I shared in the communities I participated in and honestly was trying to help people, all were gone.

So what's the point of Reddit at all? It ain't "front-page of the Internet" - it's the blackhole of it.

it is absolutely the lack of alternatives. centralization and ease of use are also big sellers.

15 years ago I was on 10 different forums and they all dried up as people went to the relevant subreddits. not even really a problem since they're all easy to aggregate anyway

reddit's gone crazy, they are banning everybody besides the bots.

Someone’s about to learn how hard it is to get critical mass for a social media application in 2026.

Every user is gold.

No one sticks.

Cascading failure collapse starting with smaller subreddits.

I made a browser extension so you can view Old Reddit when logged out: https://github.com/mkornreich/old_reddit

yup. been saying here several times that when old.reddit goes so goes me.

and thus, am done

tried to hit the profile or make the change but can't get to it -- straight to log-in / create profile

Better to adopt with apps like redreader, customisable and away from ads and unusable mobile web ui.

pretty sure that's next.

Still works for me (not logged in).

Does not for me. Likely an A/B rollout.

For me it stopped working suddenly yesterday (2026-08-10); some "proxies" are still getting in but heavens know for how long.

Same here, went dark between two clicks.

I stopped for me last week.

The first of thousands of paywalls and gatekeeping of the old, free internet into the new subscription economy. All the old wisdom locked behind a login screen.

RIP. I quit ~10 years ago, but you didn't deserve this.

Finally, I'm free

Finally, I can stop using it. It's better this way.

So anyone knows a good Android RSS reader?

Not yet for me

They didn’t kill anything. What they did is require you to login to use Old Reddit as its simplistic web design made it easy to scrape.

"They didn't remove anything, they just removed anonymous access"

yes? you can use your words and come off less like an ass, y'know.

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