Reddit recently shut down old.reddit.com for users who don’t have an account. The new site barely works on my device and I couldn’t use it to browse the way that I did even if I wanted to.
I’ve realized that at least 12 times a day (usually a lot more), I compulsively type old.reddit.com into my address bar just to see what is going on. I still do this out of muscle memory even though the URL has served a login wall for more than a week now. I don’t really care about the platform, but I’m worried about the impact it will have on my ability to find things via search.
Starting in about 2018, when I would conduct a search on Google, I noticed that if I didn’t append site:reddit.com to the search, I would end up getting low-quality content from small businesses and other content mills that had no guarantee of being helpful. By the summer of 2025 I was also frequently appending before:2023 to reduce the amount of AI responses in comments. This kept Google reasonably usable for a time, but I don’t think it will last. Reddit has been open about wanting to pivot away from drive-by traffic (which can’t be as easily profiled) and towards Facebook’s walled garden model. Both sites have absolutely destroyed Google Images as the default assumption is that everyone already has an account and can view the content.
I also archive a lot of content and have found Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube have all been clamping down on programs like yt-dlp in an effort to prevent content from being exfiltrated from their platforms.
I’m aware of various alternative platforms but the issue there is that these platforms don’t have the historical archive of content (which stretches back 20+ years on Reddit), nor the userbase necessary to create one. I’ve found most are also extremely unlikely to ever take off, with poor design decisions that make them undesirable even for people who are already sold on the need for an alternative.
The problem reminds me of how the logic of global supply chains was challenged in 2020; I had never had the experience of going to a store and expecting them to be out of something until then. Similarly, I’ve always lived in a world where my default assumption is that the information is out there and that you can access it for free; but what will the world look like when that is no longer the case?
I’ve realized that at least 12 times a day (usually a lot more), I compulsively type old.reddit.com into my address bar just to see what is going on. I still do this out of muscle memory even though the URL has served a login wall for more than a week now. I don’t really care about the platform, but I’m worried about the impact it will have on my ability to find things via search.
Starting in about 2018, when I would conduct a search on Google, I noticed that if I didn’t append site:reddit.com to the search, I would end up getting low-quality content from small businesses and other content mills that had no guarantee of being helpful. By the summer of 2025 I was also frequently appending before:2023 to reduce the amount of AI responses in comments. This kept Google reasonably usable for a time, but I don’t think it will last. Reddit has been open about wanting to pivot away from drive-by traffic (which can’t be as easily profiled) and towards Facebook’s walled garden model. Both sites have absolutely destroyed Google Images as the default assumption is that everyone already has an account and can view the content.
I also archive a lot of content and have found Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube have all been clamping down on programs like yt-dlp in an effort to prevent content from being exfiltrated from their platforms.
I’m aware of various alternative platforms but the issue there is that these platforms don’t have the historical archive of content (which stretches back 20+ years on Reddit), nor the userbase necessary to create one. I’ve found most are also extremely unlikely to ever take off, with poor design decisions that make them undesirable even for people who are already sold on the need for an alternative.
The problem reminds me of how the logic of global supply chains was challenged in 2020; I had never had the experience of going to a store and expecting them to be out of something until then. Similarly, I’ve always lived in a world where my default assumption is that the information is out there and that you can access it for free; but what will the world look like when that is no longer the case?