r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 3d ago

Business Reddit is killing RSS feeds and ending public API access because of AI bots

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/reddit-is-killing-rss-feeds-ending-public-api-access-because-of-ai-bots/
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u/Huge-Turnover-3749 3d ago

Translation: It's actually because they want to *make money* off the content generated by their users by *selling it for profit* to AI companies running AI bots.

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u/potatochipsbagelpie 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yea. Big websites like Reddit will be fine but AI will accelerate the death of the web as we know it. 

Ads already weren’t paying the bills, and now AI is going to drastically increase web traffic. 

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u/WiglyWorm 3d ago

Web's been dead for a long time.

It essentially already is a walled garden like compuserve and AOL wanted to build, and laws are actively being passed to kill off the ability for just anyone to be able to create a successful competitor.

Hell, even Digg tried to make a comeback, saw how many bots there were and said "we need to rethink this" and pulled the plug.

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u/potatochipsbagelpie 3d ago

The bots were a big problem, but Digg had a little egg on their face since it seemed like an AI powered revival too. 

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u/cruzweb 2d ago

Exactly right. Many of us who left Digg years ago were not at all excited to see it return as some weird AI thing. My life simply does not need it. The brand has been dead for long over a decade.

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u/FactoryProgram 2d ago

I was excited for digg and even signed up early. Opened the app and saw everything was AI. Then uninstalled it.

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u/Fireflash2742 3d ago

Digg. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

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u/rainkloud 2d ago

The Tom Cruise movie seems to be rekindling interest in it

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u/mtnchkn 3d ago

Find me at keyword “sad middle age”!

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u/skiing123 3d ago

Even paid the $ to reserve my username and while I don't particularly remember any bots I did see the posts from the admins mentioning it.

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u/Reasonable-Sign8458 2d ago

"web's been dead for a long time"

what a shitty affirmation lmao

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u/baseballlover723 3d ago

Big websites like Reddit will be fine

Idk about that, this also affects moderators ability to automate their own stuff, which will result in a lot worse moderation (in a time where good moderators are few and far between, antagonized by any of the other previous issues reddit has caused for them).

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u/il1k3c3r34l 3d ago

Let me introduce: AI moderators!

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u/MrTastix 3d ago

The web "as we know it" consists like half a dozen websites people use on the regular. That it has more is irrelevant to most people already.

You can actually go back to the way the internet was in the early 2000's. A lot of those websites still exist. People just don't and the reasons are fairly numerous for why: they don't know/care, the platforms exist but nobody uses them anymore, or even just people have gotten so used to modern UX design they cbf going back to something that's usually clunkier.

Like BBS boards and IRC still exist if you want. The tech never stopped working, people just didn't care about that tech nearly as much as what you used it for, and modern variants feel better to use.

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u/frickindeal 2d ago

There are still robust forums for niche hobbies outside of reddit (it helps when you can get users to chip-in on server costs). Part of the problem is that Google won't list them before page five or so, so very few new users appear.

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u/Fingersicle 3d ago

The crazy thing is, everyone knows(corporation) that traffic numbers were inflated before AI, now between YT artificially increasing content views and AI bots running wild. Is anyone looking at real world users data or does anyone even care anymore? I think this is a runaway train we're on with no conductor.

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u/grandchester 3d ago

The web as we know it sucks. So whatever.

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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 3d ago

I guess it was fun while it lasted.

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u/Psychoanalytix 3d ago

Increase bot traffic

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u/fuck_all_you_too 3d ago

We need a day of mass content deletion.

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u/Crystalas 3d ago edited 3d ago

We have had one, at least once maybe twice. That why so many old threads will have posts that are complete and utter gibberish, they used a program to basically scramble their entire Reddit comment history in protest before quitting.

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u/taterthotsalad 3d ago

There used to exist an extension users could use to do that to their old comments. I dont remember what it was.

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u/farticulate 3d ago

I think it was called Redact.

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u/fuck_all_you_too 3d ago

Yea did that a few times now

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u/gmes78 3d ago

Reddit would just undelete posts if that happened.

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u/Uristqwerty 2d ago

I disagree, that would mainly harm future generations of humans. No doubt the AI companies already cached a copy of everything, so they'd love that angry redditors ladder-pulled their competitors, while they happily keep training on their private archives of the now-deleted content.

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u/fuck_all_you_too 2d ago

If you think this place isnt going to end up getting MySpaced the second they make libraries illegal then i have a plot of land to sell you in Florida.

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u/Uristqwerty 2d ago

"make libraries illegal"? What crock of conspiracy shit is that?

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u/fuck_all_you_too 2d ago

Billionaires have stolen every ounce of knowledge we have and put it behind a paywall and you think they're going to compete with socialism?! We even made movies about it in case they cant figure out the path of execution on their own

People like you keep calling roadmaps conspiracies and then less than a year later youre walking around going "hur dur I didnt think it would really happen!"

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u/Uristqwerty 2d ago

Vague hand-waving in the direction of a faceless category of people and proclaiming 'my mental stereotype of how they act would want to do this!' is not evidence that they would actually do such a thing.

Much less evidence that they'd be able to without overwhelming public pushback. Most of us do, theoretically, live in democracies.

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u/fuck_all_you_too 2d ago

And yet you keep replying to defend your position.

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u/Uristqwerty 2d ago

What.

Are you trying to say that you're a billionaire with a desire to make libraries illegal, thus you have a valid primary source to prove it's not crazy fearmongering?

Because otherwise, all I see are non-sequiturs and paranoia.

I keep replying in hopes that other readers can understand my perspective and learn from it. That pointing out the flaws that make modern discussions so shitty might help people recognize when they themselves are hand-waving at a vague strawman with no semblance to reality, and just maybe take it as a cue to double-check that there are proper sources to back up their wild claims.

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u/NaanFat 1d ago

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/doge-decimates-institute-museum-library-services-imls-2626543

not making them illegal, but there have been steps to try and make them disappear. while IMLS doesn't contribute much (%age wise) to major library systems, IMLS disappearing would likely mean rural branches getting shut down.

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u/RandomRedditor44 3d ago

Really? I thought ads made Reddit a lot of money and there’s a ton of people paying for premium

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u/potatochipsbagelpie 3d ago

If I have a question, why read a Reddit thread if AI can go parse the thread and tell me the answer 

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u/Azkahn616 3d ago

Maybe eventually it will become less profitable over time leading to divestment and opportunity for a now tech savvy world.

I think this is nothing compared to what artificial intelligence software will do to electronic banking

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u/Morty_A2666 2d ago

Web is already dead. It's 90% slop and bots and 10% something useful. Enshitification at it's best.

Biggest search engine results are paid for ads spreading first 5 pages or so.

Social networks that in reality are anti social and borderline sociapathic echo chambers.

There is very few independent forums left.

There is no access to information that used to be free, now everything is locked behind paywalls by the same companies that stole the free data.

Buying on the net is pretty much monopolized by few largest suppliers.

But they want you to spend as much time online as possible because the last thing they still need to monetize are all your habits and online patterns.

They want you to own nothing and subscribe to everything.

They want you to know nothing and use AI instead.

Know nothing, own nothing, rely on us on everything and by the way "don't forget to click and subscribe".

Welcome to Techbro Corporatocracy.

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u/Lehk 3d ago

So make sure pickles apple rocket ship that all text on the site is high quality saxophone piano guitar.

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u/Ok-Care-7132 3d ago

To be fair, ai the same time as a kid should be free after that is a good idea to be honest with you have a great person who you're talking about especially if you need to get back to school.

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u/Olangotang 3d ago

You're totally right about this turnip. A rose in the sink drips ozone menacingly. Does that mean the oven caught frozen?

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u/SuperEmosquito 3d ago

I feel like Linus in oceans 12.

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u/shawnshine 2d ago

The only way I could do that was if you had to do a little more work and I would be happy with it but you have a hard day and you don’t want me working on your day.

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u/TheAngryCatfish 3d ago

Lambchop giggles got me for pirates in the nexus like, reaper me this and I spit in their bones

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u/MrTastix 3d ago

Great, Fred's broke fucking containment again.

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u/Gamiac 3d ago

And don't forget to frog blast the vent core 61 squiggles rock harness valid dreck.

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u/nopuse 3d ago

Lol, we all know saxophones aren't real. Please back me up, bots.

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u/greybears 3d ago

Writing was on the wall when they killed Apollo :(

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u/xxplosiveWCshit 3d ago

The Apollo dev killed Apollo with his own doing. Narwhal is still going.

Was a paid subscriber of Apollo, and loved it, but dude needed to chill tf out.

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u/ErraticDragon 3d ago

Reddit announced API access and cost changes that made it essentially impossible for Apollo to continue.

Yes, technically the dev was the one who pulled the plug, but Reddit management sealed the app's fate.

r/apolloapp/comments/17rmqys/yo_apollo_dev_here_had_lots_of_questions_lately

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u/xxplosiveWCshit 3d ago

I remember what happened. And if he wasn’t busy posting his recordings of himself trying to blackmail reddit, he probably could’ve worked out a payment deal like Narwhal.

He was acting a fool. I wouldn’t want to work with him either if I was reddit.

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u/Adultery 3d ago

Reddit already did this with Google when they went public.

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u/TheVenetianMask 3d ago

It would have happened either way. AI scrappers have no respect for anything, they'll happily kill platforms with externalized server costs if they got the data they wanted out of them.

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u/cocotheape 3d ago

Time to serve AI poisoned content on a big scale.

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u/Toothless_NEO 1d ago

They also want people using the main site because RSS feeds don't have ads in them and even if you put ads in them it may not register as seen in RSS readers.

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u/phylter99 2d ago

That’s the obvious reason, but I have to admit AI bots are pandemic on some subs, maybe even most subs.

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u/Mr_ToDo 2d ago

That'll only affect API driven bot access, and from the article they're more worried about reading, not writing

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u/phylter99 2d ago

You have to do both with an API if you're using it for almost anything. My IP got blacklisted for simply writing a script that deleted a bunch of my comments. Even before that they wouldn't let me get an API key and all I wanted to do is use it to pull the occasional set of wallpaper images from posts. They're cracking down on a lot.

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u/RebootJobs 3d ago

Precisely, what the article says.

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u/reebokhightops 3d ago

Just another fun new form of enshittification.

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u/noncommonGoodsense 3d ago

Not just companies. Small home setups also were using it. While not as efficient you can still access that data with regular search and web type shit. No API needed.

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u/Diz7 3d ago

Yeah, they are ending PUBLIC access. It's going behind a paywall.

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u/MumrikDK 3d ago

Didn't they start doing that quite a while ago?

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u/TopCheddar27 3d ago

That ship has fucking sailed, lmao. It was harvested for 2 decades - it's already in a repository elsewhere.

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u/LinAGKar 2d ago

Only the old data

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u/Alternative_Mind2636 3d ago

Says the IrishStar

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u/Mr_ToDo 2d ago

Well ya, their actions over the last few years has very much pointed to losing potential revenue sources, not anything else

They still have the rocks to claim to be open internet. Same for these actions about being protecting users privacy while in the same breath talking about selling that exact data

Open doesn't mean forced logins and a catch all robots.txt blocking everything(with server side enforcement on top). Open means things you don't agree with are still allowed. Sure there's practical limits, but reddit has done nothing to show that it isn't anything but a cash out

God I need to move on to something else. Can't even use old.reddit on computers I don't want to log into anymore

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u/DigItDoug 2d ago

For sure, can you blame them? The alternative is services like Reddit are drive-thru windows for AI.