Reddit locks down as bots eat the internet. Can online anonymity survive?

Reddit was boosted heavily in Google Search results for years, driving clicks and promoting sustainability. So it’s no surprise that Reddit took a massive hit when AI Overview overshadowed Search, and now Reddit is locking its platform to prevent AI — and people — from accessing it without an account.Google Search used to be a reciprocal tool that benefited both Google and website publishers. When users searched for a term, Google brought up a list of websites that included that keyword. If the results were relevant, the user clicked, giving the website vital traffic and earning both it and Google some ad revenue. These were much simpler times. Better times, even. But I digress.You should expect more companies to restrict their platforms as AI bots and agents run amok, otherwise unchecked, across the World Wide Web.Today Google largely cuts out the middleman to serve itself. Search is now a secondary product, dwarfed by AI Overview, where users type a query into the search bar, and Google AI Overview provides a response scraped from all the websites that are now further down the page — out of sight, out of mind. Users don’t have to click to get an answer anymore, because AI Overview already presented the information in full, robbing both website publishers and Google of that same ad revenue that kept them afloat.All ad-based websites were hit hard by this monumental change. Even Google recently admitted that AI Overview probably isn’t good for its bottom line, as search revenue growth slowed, per the latest earnings call at the end of October. Among the hardest hit websites, though, was Reddit.In a not-too-distant past, Google and Reddit had a close relationship. The former often referenced the latter in snippet results and ranked Reddit high on its result listings. This is how AI Overview ended up generating some extremely odd — and sometimes dangerous — responses in its early days, leaning on Reddit comments that advised users to replace cheese on pizza with non-toxic glue or eat one rock per day for good health. Even after switching to an AI-first search solution, Google still pulled data from Reddit and displayed it prominently, this time, though, without the backlinks that benefited Reddit’s platform. Mere months after AI Overview overtook Search, this level of data scraping without anything in return isn’t sustainable for Reddit’s brand. To block AI bots from continuing to repackage Subreddits as their own, Reddit is officially locking anonymous accounts — both human and AI — out of its platform for good.Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, announced the move on his profile, writing:I want to talk about a big change we're making on Reddit: We're going to evolve Reddit to being a primarily logged-in experience.We’re making the change because it’s better for user experience, better for our ads business, is more in line with safety regulations, and more protective of Reddit data. And we can do this while continuing to ensure user privacy.RELATED: Google's AI overhaul of Search will overfish the internet to extinction bgblue/Getty ImagesHe went on to highlight several main reasons for the decision, from user personalization, to data protection, to regulatory factors, and more. One of the biggest points that stood out, though, was that “the vast majority of unauthorized access to Reddit (basically the scraping and stealing of Reddit’s data) happens through our logged-out experiences.”Basically, AI bots are anonymously mining Reddit for data — namely users’ comments, thoughts, and interactions — and leaving the company with nothing to show for it.The change isn’t set in stone yet, so there’s still time to tweak how it will work. First, it will enter a testing phase in several unnamed regions outside of the United States through the end of 2026 and into 2027. If that goes well, users should expect a wider rollout that will officially restrict Subreddits to those who have a username and password.This isn’t the first controversial move Reddit has made recently to protect its business. Earlier this year, the company forced some users to download the Reddit app on their mobile devices in lieu of visiting Subreddits on the mobile web.You should expect more companies to restrict their platforms as AI bots and agents run amok, otherwise unchecked, across the World Wide Web.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!