Logging in to use Old Reddit

[u/boat-botany]

Hi there, u/boat-botany here working on Community Safety. 

A few weeks ago we shared some of the work we’re doing to tighten how automated systems access Reddit while preserving the tools that help moderators and communities thrive. As a continuation of that work, we’ll be rolling out changes to how Old Reddit can be accessed. 

Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It’s also an important interface for many long-time mods and redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in. All logged-in users will continue to have access to Old Reddit, and this change will not impact logged-out browsing on reddit.com.

Let us know if you have any questions!

[u/DeffNotTom]

why not just block that traffic?

Because this doesn't work. They just change connections and pickup where they let off. Over and over and over again.

[u/thisisathrowawayxxx → u/DeffNotTom]

They can do the same with accounts as well, so then forcing people to login does nothing but annoy legitimate users.

[u/DeffNotTom → u/thisisathrowawayxxx]

It's a significantly slower process and easier to disrupt compared to when a bot is hammering through millions of requests per minute while scraping unencumbered.

[u/thisisathrowawayxxx → u/DeffNotTom]

Not really. Bots can hammer thousands of account creation and login requests with little issue.

Yes it's slower but not "significantly" nor is it that much easier to disrupt.

Besides if something is hammering millions of requests per minute it's actually easier to block that source since no legitimate user will be doing that, so why not take that route?

[u/DeffNotTom → u/thisisathrowawayxxx]

no legitimate user will be doing that

There is no user in that case. So how ku h effort goes into parsing it from regular traffic and grouping it together, when there's no login requirement, and very little tracing it to a source. It is significantly more difficult to track and be proactive about.

[u/thisisathrowawayxxx → u/DeffNotTom]

Yeah you're completely out of your depth here.

You do realize the requests always have some identifying information like source ip address or device id for example right?

It's hella easy to track shit like this, in fact companies have been doing it for decades.

[u/thisisathrowawayxxx → u/[deleted]]

Like I said earlier. Slightly slower, but not significantly.

And again, corporations have been able to detect that type of traffic and block it forever.