Huffman's shareholder letter details the traffic collapse and rollout plan
3 Oct 29 5:49 PM · 9d ago · 10 articles · 19 posts · 12 comments · 6 sources · development 3 of 6
In the Q3 shareholder letter, Huffman said search and logged-out/web traffic were hit hardest, warned that continued decline could cut Q4 DAUq by a low-double-digit percentage, and said Reddit will test the login requirement in select non-US markets starting in Q4 before deciding on a global rollout.
“During October, we have seen that search traffic has dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week.”
Steve Huffman
Steve Huffman Reddit CEOReddit Inc. Company behind the platformGoogle Search engine whose AI Overviews are blamed for traffic lossOpenAI AI company with a Reddit data licensing deal
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What was reported 1 claim about this development
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first by Thurrott, 9d ago · also Axios
What people said 21 voices · best of 24 · verbatim
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And here's a non-paywalled site by a website owned by the same company that used to own Reddit before it went public (and is the largest shareholder): arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026... (none of us make any money off this site so whatevs)
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“The move is designed to protect its data from AI scraping, allowing the company to instead forge lucrative licensing deals with model providers. But just as important, such a shift could help Reddit to increase its revenue even as it faces daily active user declines in its largest market, the U.S.” https:// techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/as-s…
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Quite frankly, I think they're doing it to profit from selling the data, shutting out any AI software not sanctioned by Reddit in the process. Local LLMs won't have a good means of browsing Reddit. Cloud AI services may be more expensive if their providers have to pay to maintain access to Reddit. It's bad all around.
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Discord opens up, Reddit closes down. Oh, and buried in there is that Reddit also plans to disable all mobile web access and force people on mobile devices to use the app. No thanks. -
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Reddit is moving toward requiring users to sign in after a decline in search traffic. This feels related to Google’s earnings miss yesterday. AI is answering questions that once sent people to websites. Google is seeing slower search ad growth while sites like Reddit are losing organic traffic. https://www. engadget.com/2301687/reddit-wi…
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They want what you see to be highly controlled by them. If they don't know who you are, they can't link the algorithm to your digital twin. If they can't link the digital twin, they can't properly control the algorithm to feed you highly curated propaganda.
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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/reddit-will-require-you-to-log-in-eventually-ceo-confirms/ and there goes so much information out the window. No one could have predicted that. No one.
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Reddit siger, at det vil kræve, at alle brugere er logget ind for at se indlæg, med henvisning til den enorme stigning i AI og web scraping Det sagde ikke, hvornår ændringen ville træde i kraft https://www. reddit.com/user/spez/comments/ 1xiupm0/about_that_login_screen/
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Yep, If even 15 seconds sometimes. It seems sooner. And you cannot turn off the onslaught of random sub recommendations filling your feed on web. I suspect this is the end (of reddit for me).
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reddit will require you to be logged in (@theverge.com) Main Link | Discussion
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All the gardens, they are walled ... Reddit is moving to “a logged-in-only experience,” CEO says https:// arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/1 0/reddit-will-require-you-to-log-in-eventually-ceo-confirms/
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Not only can you not do shit, you can't actually click the fucking login button on mobile browser. Which is stupid but also probably intentional, because they want you on their bullshit app.
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Oh, another reason you should stop using Reddit, you say? https://www. theverge.com/tech/1022571/redd it-login-requirement-q3-2026-earnings # Reddit # Socialmedia # Fediverse
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Why would users have a better experience? If the idea is this will fight bots, you already need an account to post. This adds nothing new there.
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Yeah, no. The bots that they have roaming around are pretty vicious. I got it appealed but it has happened a number of times now
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i imagine it'll be like twitter, where you can see a post but none of the comments, and clicking any link will require a login.
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is this a joke or are you serious? cuz if i’m not just taking things too literally and there’s a source i am SO interested
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Clearly there’s more to the story because anti-Israel content is plastered all over the front page of Reddit every week.
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Oh yeah because the last few times Iran have tried SO many missles got through! Enjoy wasting your life asshole
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This destroyed every other company who tried it before. Maybe this time it’s different.
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He said Israel, he never said Jew. Your religious choice and your country are separate.
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