Reddit Moves to a Logged‑In Only Experience
Reddit will become a logged‑in only experience, and the company plans to move fast, beginning testing soon in regions outside the US before flipping the switch globally.
The popular community website—home to many official and unofficial gaming message boards—lost about one million search engine referrals per week on average in October, CEO Steve Huffman said on an investor call today.
The culprit, of course, was AI. A Google search that once might have led someone to a 14‑year‑old Reddit thread is now likely to present the answer in an AI summary, no click required.
“Google has really shifted in their relationship with the rest of the internet,” Huffman said during a Q&A.
The CEO emphasized that over 80% of Reddit’s revenue comes from logged‑in and app users, and said the company will focus on establishing the site as a direct daily habit that doesn’t rely on search traffic.
Efforts cited in that direction include algorithmic feeds, improved app design and performance, AI‑powered moderation tools, and new experiences like games and visual podcasts, the latter using generative AI to turn posts into videos uses generative AI to turn posts into videos.
The switch to a logged‑in only experience will also help protect access to Reddit’s extremely valuable corpus of data, Huffman said.
Reddit currently has AI training arrangements with OpenAI and Google. In the Q&A portion of the call, Huffman said that Reddit has nothing to announce about those deals, but it is in active discussions and its leadership will do what makes sense and is in the best interest for Reddit strategically and economically.
Although it reported 53% year‑over‑year revenue growth in its 2026 third‑quarter results and 16% growth in weekly active users, Reddit’s share price dropped today due to a lower‑than‑expected forecast for the next quarter.