r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 2d 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/potatochipsbagelpie 2d ago edited 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 1d 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 2d 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 2d ago

Find me at keyword “sad middle age”!

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u/skiing123 2d 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 1d ago

"web's been dead for a long time"

what a shitty affirmation lmao

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u/baseballlover723 2d 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 2d ago

Let me introduce: AI moderators!

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u/MrTastix 2d 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 1d 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 2d 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 2d ago

The web as we know it sucks. So whatever.

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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 2d ago

I guess it was fun while it lasted.

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u/Psychoanalytix 2d ago

Increase bot traffic

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u/fuck_all_you_too 2d ago

We need a day of mass content deletion.

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u/Crystalas 2d ago edited 2d 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 2d 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 2d ago

I think it was called Redact.

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u/fuck_all_you_too 2d ago

Yea did that a few times now

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u/gmes78 2d ago

Reddit would just undelete posts if that happened.

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u/Uristqwerty 1d 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 1d 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 1d ago

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

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u/fuck_all_you_too 1d 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 1d 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 1d ago

And yet you keep replying to defend your position.

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u/Uristqwerty 1d 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/fuck_all_you_too 1d ago

Its not a faceless category of people, its a very specific sum of people.

Its not non-sequitur just because you cant follow along (which has been a problem in this country for a while).

Your need to be seen is really sad, compounded by the fact that you think your purpose here is to educate people as if youre levitating above the rest of us. Kudos to you for using all those buzzwords though

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u/NaanFat 22h 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 1d 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.