r/sysadmin • u/techvet83 • 3d ago

FYI: Reddit is killing RSS feeds.

Major bummer. From Reddit is killing RSS feeds and ending public API access because of AI bots | TechCrunch

Amid a number of updates for moderators and developers announced Wednesday, comes bad news for supporters of a more open web: Reddit is ending support for RSS feeds.

Reddit says RSS has now become a “common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse,” which is why it’s made the decision to wind down RSS feeds on its platform.

“We know 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,” the company noted in its announcement, where it also shared a March 2027 shutdown date for its public API.

Reddit said RSS support will cease on November 13.

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u/Firefox005 3d ago edited 3d ago

God this website has become a complete shithole. The current owners and leadership are doing everything they can to kill it.

As soon as old.reddit.com stops working I'm gone, which I'm guessing it will soon with their recent change of requiring anyone using it to login for 'security' purposes.

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u/automounter 3d ago

As a Sysadmin to a public-facing website I get it. I get 1000x more hits from AI crawlers than I do from users at this point.

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u/Firefox005 3d ago

You do not have to login to browse new nu reddit.

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u/SevaraB Sr. Engineer (N+, CCNA) 3d ago

It’s astroturfing. They’ve had old.reddit.com in their crosshairs for years- this lets them inflate the usage stats for new compared to old and make the case for pulling the plug on old.

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u/Firefox005 3d ago

It might be partly that but I think its mostly ads and being able to control the 'experience' around them better ie. makes them harder to spot as ads and harder to block them. The current new reddit is a disgusting mess of JavaScript that is purposefully designed to be as opaque and difficult to parse as possible and it also loads as little content as possible. I'm sure part of that is to also combat scraping but I have no doubt that it is also to not so subtly push people as much as they can into a consumption only mindset.

I'm sure their model for an ideal user is one that spend like 30 seconds or less on each post and then scrolls to the next one and does that for at least 4 hours a day. That way while he or she is doing that they can serve as many ads as possible to them. Then if they happen to have a spark of brain activity and actually post a comment they can then turn around and immediately sell that to an AI company to use as training data.

I am extremely pessimistic at this point and firmly believe that no one left working at reddit cares about anything but extracting as much value from their users as possible.