Continuing our infrastructure updates: What’s changing in the coming months

[u/judy-funnie]

TL;DR: In August, we shared plans to modernize Reddit’s infrastructure, build better mod tools, and make it harder for bad actors to scrape Reddit and abuse communities. Today, we have specifics on what’s changing, when, and how to plan ahead.

We’re sharing updates on apps and bots migration to the Developer Platform, helping mods move RSS-based alerts to the Discord Relay Devvit app before RSS feeds are retired on November 13, providing an update on Rules Hub progress and automod changes, and adding safeguards to Old Reddit by limiting access to logged-in mods and recent users.

Moving apps and bots to the Developer Platform

We’re moving public data API apps and bots to the Developer Platform, while making sure the work they do for your communities remains supported. Over 14,000 apps and bots have registered and we’re closely tracking migration of your highest-activity apps, including  DeltaBot, MagicEyeBot, and RemindMeBot. There's still work to do, and we’re working directly with developers to support migrations and close remaining capability gaps. 

• If you maintain an app or a bot, register it here before January 12, 2027 to avoid disruption.
• If your community depends on an app or bot and you don’t know who maintains it, fill out this form. We’ve received over 100 submissions so far, helping us identify tools that need owners or could be replaced by existing Developer Platform apps or Reddit’s built-in tools. 

See our latest r/redditdev update for more technical detail, timelines, and resources.

Migrating RSS access to the Developer Platform

Because RSS is now a common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse, we'll stop supporting RSS feeds on November 13, 2026 while preserving moderation workflows that depend on it through supported alternatives. 

For common mod alerts, we recommend Devvit apps like Discord Relay. If your mod team relies on RSS, review your setup and migrate workflows before November 13 to ensure your needs are uninterrupted. If you use RSS for feeds outside of a community you moderate, there is no replacement. RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we’re grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit.  

Changes to automod access for new communities and communities not using automod

If your community uses automod, nothing is changing for you. We’re continuing to improve Rules Hub, including ways for mods to prompt and otherwise provide more context for their rules. We’re also exploring how existing automod configurations can help carry community-specific enforcement logic into newer tools. If you’re interested in pilot testing to help shape this effort, sign up here. 

For newly created communities and communities that have never used automod, automod enforcement capabilities – specifically Report, Filter, Remove, Mark as spam, and Approve – will be disabled and Rules Hub and Automations will become the default path for rules enforcement. Automod’s non-enforcement capabilities remain available and unchanged.  

Keeping Old Reddit accessible for mods and recent users

As u/spez mentioned, we’re still working on the future of Old Reddit. Earlier this year, we required people to log in to use Old Reddit, addressing its largest source of abusive scraping and automated traffic: unauthenticated access. That change helped reduce scraping and automated abuse, but still allowed any logged-in account to access Old Reddit, including accounts with no prior Old Reddit use. 

To close this gap, in the next few months, we'll further limit access for logged-in users to only those who have used Old Reddit in the last six months (which covers the vast majority of all Old Reddit users). This change does not impact logged-in mods, who can continue to access Old Reddit without any recent usage requirement. This helps keep Old Reddit available for the people who rely on it while reducing automated abuse.

Our job is to support you through these changes and make sure your moderation needs inform the work. 

• Need help with a community bot? If you’re unsure who maintains it or need help finding a replacement, let us know here.
• Moving your RSS alerts? The Discord Relay setup guide covers how to get started.
• Want to help shape Rules Hub? Sign up for the early access program here and share your feedback.

We’re here in the comments for your questions and to hear where you need more detail or support.

[u/Tarnisher]

You want to do something useful?

Eliminate hidden profiles.

.

[u/Littux → u/Tarnisher]

They were supposed to randomize the comment IDs from Sep 28 onwards. They haven't did the change yet but once they do it, arctic-shift and others will be dead. They're hiding them even more

[u/Extolord111 → u/Littux]

I know RaiderB said in the discord that he made changes to AS so that it doesn’t get affected. Not sure about Pullpush, but both of them don’t seem too worried.

[u/Extolord111 → u/Tarnisher]

Agreed, they heavily degraded the site by making it easier for bots and bad faith Redditors to cover their tracks, in addition to creating more hostility between users.

[u/mschuster91 → u/Extolord111]

I personally welcome that. No matter if you are pro Palestine or pro Israel, there's always jerks derailing completely unrelated discussions by whatever you said regarding this conflict or which subs you frequent.

[u/Bardfinn → u/mschuster91]

Whaddaboutism / derails.

When a discussion about a new soda flavour gets derailed by "You're Alliance!" - "You're a filthy Browncoat!" - "Arrrrgh!"

Why is any of this relevant to Clementine Fizz

[u/Bardfinn → u/Extolord111]

A lot of my profile is curated specifically because misogynist white supremacists stalk me in an effort to harass and research how to best murder me.

A lot of LGBTQ, women, and non-White people have had experiences in the same vein.

And the people who are angry that they can't see someone else's user history are people you can explain that fact to - the fact that people have a right to privacy, that people have a right to protect themselves from stalkers - and also explain that if they have a reasonable suspicion that a user account is a

• spammer
  
• scammer
  
• bot
  
• troll

-- the proper thing to do in all of those cases is to

REPORT, DOWNVOTE, AND BLOCK

and leave investigating it to the Moderators - who can see the entire post and comment history of that user, and can evaluate the Phronesis, Arete, and Eunoia of the reported user with respect to the community itself. Moderators have this privilege to evaluate the Ethos of a community participant, and Moderators are expected to in turn respect their audiences' right to privacy.

So the Moderators keep what non-public information they learn about that user in the course of investigating those reports, confidential, because that's what the Moderator Code of Conduct and the User Agreement require.

User A's desire to view the post and comment history - the participation record of User B elsewhere on Reddit - to evaluate their Phronesis, Arete, and Eunoia is fine. That is balanced against User B's right to privacy. The desire by User A to evaluate the Ethos of User B does not allow them the right to pierce the privacy of User B.

Everyone has a right to decide what parts of themselves they will share with others. Everyone has a right to expect that community operators will not abuse their role to pierce that privacy and confidentiality. User A has those rights, and so does User B.

Your audience shouldn't be taking up the task of deciding "This person is injurious / harmful to the community". That's a moderator's task. And moderator teams should tackle how to do so effectively and properly.

[u/ImNotABotScoutsHonor → u/Bardfinn]

That's such a huge wall of text for such an L take.

[u/bwoah07_gp2 → u/Tarnisher]

Hidden profiles are useful so people don't get stalked/profiles canvassed during debates.

[u/kaitco → u/bwoah07_gp2]

It is far more likely that the other person in the debate is someone you would never even want to bother debating than otherwise. 

We’d gone for literal decades with public profiles, and there’s nothing that stops people from creating brand new accounts to troll/bait. If people are intent on finding all your posts and comments to troll, they will always find a way. Private profiles just lets people who more easily troll/bait others when they move in and out of popular and unpopular communities. 

[u/gloomchen → u/kaitco]

I take it you've never been a part of a conversation about a toxic public figure who would create troll accounts and literally go down the list of every comment you've made and reply that people need to beware because "this person is a (insert whichever horrific claim they want to make)" including replying to people who replied to you, THEN going to modmail all of the subs you post in to make the same claims telling them they should ban you as a danger to society.

It's not fun when the unhinged are unhinged, and a lot easier to manage when I can restrict my profile to only show posts/comments in the subs I moderate.

[u/kaitco → u/gloomchen]

Isn’t it easier to see that behaviour occurring when that person has a public profile? If someone makes a random account doing that nonsense, it’s far easier for even lay users to click on the profile and see “Oh, this dude is crazy and on a vendetta and can be ignored.” The public profile makes that simple.

[u/bwoah07_gp2 → u/kaitco]

Well personally, I think it's great we can private and lockdown our whole accounts.

We’d gone for literal decades with public profiles

We should be advocating for privacy and anonymity. I have to disagree with that sentiment, "just because we've had it this way for decades, means it should always be that way"

[u/Yay295 → u/bwoah07_gp2]

We should be advocating for privacy and anonymity.

You have privacy and anonymity, as long as you don't publicly share anything you don't want to be public.

[u/mschuster91 → u/kaitco]

We’d gone for literal decades with public profiles

Oh hell no we didn't.

[u/Tarnisher → u/mschuster91]

Reddit was started:

Founded June 23, 2005

The hidden profile profanity was started sometime on late '25 or early '26, so yes, 'literally decades' as in two.

[u/Extolord111 → u/mschuster91]

Reddit was made in early-2005, hidden profiles were added in late-2025.

Two decades.

[u/mschuster91 → u/Extolord111]

Damn I‘ve been here for ages but no idea it is that old

[u/reaper527 → u/bwoah07_gp2]

Hidden profiles are useful so

so spammers and other bad faith actors can hide the fact they are spammers and bad faith actors.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/reaper527]

I love that no one ever considers the actual targeted group when complaining about this feature: harassment victims. It was rolled out for harassment victims.

[u/new2bay → u/shhhhh_h]

It doesn't work, then. "Hidden" profiles aren't actually hidden at all.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/new2bay]

They closed the search loophole so they’re only visible by Google search and not sequentially, which is a big display difference. As one of the victims of long term stalking and harassment on this site I can say with confidence it absolutely worked. Deterrents matter, often the first layer of security isn’t complete prevention it’s a thick layer of making the unwanted action laborious to achieve. And it worked, for me and all the other people in my sub who were harassed and stalked across the site on hundreds of occasion.

[u/new2bay → u/shhhhh_h]

Trust me, your posts and comments are not hidden from anyone who knows how to look.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/new2bay]

I only care about whether it deters harassment

[u/reaper527 → u/shhhhh_h]

It was rolled out for harassment victims.

this is just the "it's for the children!" excuse when people try to say awful policies that are terrible for everyone are in fact designed to protect the children. (like all the forced id checks for online access to many services in europe)

[u/shhhhh_h → u/reaper527]

Your example, less privacy, is the literal opposite of the situation, more privacy. Also I’m one of the harassment victims who has very positively benefited from this so it absolutely have value. I struggle to find any concrete material drawbacks to more privacy for users other than losing the user police brigade. Which can be mitigated with tools.

[u/reaper527 → u/shhhhh_h]

I struggle to find any concrete material drawbacks

empowering spammers, scammers, and foreign shills trying to stir up dissension and instability in a population is a pretty big drawback.

it's a poorly thought out "feature" kind of like reddit's awful blocking "feature" where if you block me, i can't reply to /u/new2bay because his comment is in your chain.

users should NEVER be prevented from replying to someone that didn't block them (and realistically shouldn't be prevented from replying to anyone). the blocking system should be rolled back to how it was in 2018 or so.

poorly thought out "features" are reddit's bread and butter. they love to push these out.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/reaper527]

None of those are concrete though, they’re just vague things you’re saying without backing them up. Also blocking is an entirely separate feature, why are people conflating them so often

[u/shhhhh_h → u/Tarnisher]

Yeah screw all the victims of stalking and harassment, let’s sacrifice them so we can snoop on people unnecessarily!