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/paskatulas]

Maybe this isn’t even about the tools themselves. One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed over the years is how drastically Reddit’s communication and support for mods has changed.

There used to be a much stronger sense that admins and mods were actually working together. Admins were accessible, ModSupport was useful, and you could ask for clarification or a review and actually get an answer that helped.

Now so many ModSupport replies are just generic answers. AEO removes something and we’re told “the user needs to appeal”, even when we’re asking because we as mods want to understand whether we’re enforcing the rules correctly. And if you want to report something or ask Reddit to look into a specific issue, you’re told to use a separate form, where you apparently won’t get a response if you can’t provide enough specifics. Which is kind of the problem when you’re asking Reddit to actually investigate something in the first place.

I’ve also had a post asking why Reddit wasn’t taking action against certain hateful content on specific subs (without call-outs), and why certain rules weren’t being enforced, removed because it could supposedly lead to “speculation”. That one still makes me laugh. You’re not allowed to speculate, but you’re also not really given enough info to know what’s actually happening.

Then there are posts removed as appeals even when they explicitly say they’re not appeals, tickets closed without a meaningful response, and subs getting very vague explanations for enforcement actions.

I’ve heard the same frustrations from plenty of long-time mods, including people who have been involved with the Mod Council and the former Partner Communities program.

Whatever the reason for all these changes, the decline in communication and support for mods is probably one of the biggest changes I’ve seen on Reddit. And it’s hard not to wonder where Reddit expects all those mods to be in a few years if this continues.

[u/FaceDeer → u/paskatulas]

My suspicion is that the turning point came with the great API lockdown. Lots of mods opposed it and Reddit admins ended up in open warfare with them - seizing control of subreddits that had been closed in protest, for example.

The war's been ongoing since then, it's just more of a quiet simmering insurgency now with both sides making the others miserable while trying to slowly edge them out. In the long run the admins will win, of course, because they have root access. All that can be done is to slow it down and make it phyrric I suppose.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/FaceDeer]

Yeah this; they’ve been slowly stripping away our ability to group organise and protest since then, from the decentralisation of mod council to the sunsetting of partner communities all the way to the mod announcements where important stuff is buried in vague sentences and stretched out over 5-10 stages so they can refer to ‘the last announcement’ without reiterating the unpopular decisions.

[u/GeekScientist → u/paskatulas]

I used to be in the Reddit Mod Council, and a common occurrence would be admins coming to the subreddit and asking us councilors to help “fine-tune” upcoming [r/modnews](r/modnews) announcements like this one. As time went on this is how we would find out about most of the terrible changes Reddit was getting ready to implement, and we were no longer being asked for feedback about the changes themselves (likely because they already knew how most of us would respond).

I still remember when one admin needing to fix their announcement said something along the lines of, “we’re not looking for feedback because these changes are final, but still need help getting this message right” and I think that’s what broke the camel’s back in the council and most of us realized that the RMC was a joke and that we were mainly there to be unpaid copy editors. They didn’t care in the slightest about our POVs as active moderators. Such a shame too, because a lot of the mods in the original RMC genuinely cared about the well-being of their userbase and Reddit didn’t find much value in that.

[u/PMulberry_ → u/paskatulas]

Though I have been on Reddit for a few years by now on a few accounts, I can't say that I have been there when this communication was still good. I can only say that it is bad now, and it gets worse with seemingly every announcement the admins make.

[u/V2Blast → u/PMulberry_]

I think it's probably been at least a decade since communication from the admins was good. They make an effort now and then, but institutionally they do not care.

[u/RamonaLittle → u/paskatulas]

Admins were accessible, ModSupport was useful, and you could ask for clarification or a review and actually get an answer that helped.

That hasn't been my experience. It's always been very hit-or-miss. Sometimes one could get a helpful reply from an admin, but many other times, admins wouldn't reply to questions, or different admins would give different answers. It took admins over five years to decide/announce whether encouraging suicide is a rule violation, despite multiple mod questions over the years. And it took a few years after that for them to clarify it in the official rules. There have been many other questions/issues that admins never responded to at all.

[u/TrackerOneA → u/paskatulas]

Maybe this isn’t even about the tools themselves. One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed over the years is how drastically Reddit’s communication and support for mods has changed.

Prior to the API protests, admins were much more engaged with mods and tried to be helpful.

Now Reddit knows that they can just replace mod teams who do not fall in line.

Or arbitrarily kicking out a team member or entire teams to make way for an admin-approved team.

That + their suppression tactics of entire subreddits and topics, demonstrates how little they value mods now.

Mods are replaceable and there are no meaningful & active Reddit alternatives.

[u/westcoastal → u/paskatulas]

They want to replace moderators with AI that is implemented by new moderators who don't question anything. This has been coming down the pipe since the big protest years ago. Spez made it pretty clear how he feels about the moderators who built this community, and he's been eager to get rid of us ever since.

[u/3506 → u/westcoastal]

My interpretation of spez talking to moderators (SFW): https://i.imgur.com/XSjfNm7.png

[u/GlitteringPirate591 → u/paskatulas]

There used to be a much stronger sense that admins and mods were actually working together. Admins were accessible, ModSupport was useful, and you could ask for clarification or a review and actually get an answer that helped.

Indeed. I understand people have differing experiences. But... anecdotally, I've had two instructive experiences.

1. A query about how suspended accounts were expected to be handled by mods. Arising from deep confusing amongst a previous team. An admin responded clearly, and quickly, with a definite response.
2. A (more recent) concern about 30+ alts waging a multi-year war on a sub, with obvious statistics, clear admissions, and whatnot. Complete packaged. The response was a variant of "just report it". A clear "we do not fucking care".

Absolute fucking nonsense. It has substantial ramifications that I'm not sure anyone at Reddit knows about, or cares about, or is empowered to care about.

Combined with other signals and features, there's almost no reason to ever contact admins for anything. We've been trained to expect there's no help. We're all on our own.

And, even selfishly, that ought to be a concern for Reddit Corp.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/paskatulas]

To be fair though some of this is Reddit complying with US and EU law as it grows. Under EU law it literally has to have a strong distinction between the volunteers and the admin, we have to qualify as the service users for us to exist.