Reddit is going to require people to log in to use the site, starting with tests in some markets outside the US over the next few months and with no date yet for the US, CEO Steve Huffman said in the company’s third-quarter shareholder letter. Huffman argued the change protects Reddit’s data, since most unauthorized scraping happens through logged-out browsing, while still letting Reddit license that data to companies like OpenAI and Google. Logged-out visitors made up 76.8M of Reddit’s 130.3M daily users last quarter, but they’re also the traffic Reddit is losing, with search referrals down by more than 1M a week on average in October. Huffman said app and logged-in users already account for over 80% of Reddit’s monetization, and that ads get better targeted when more people sign in.
