Reddit is warning that Old Reddit, the 21-year-old legacy desktop version of the site still favoured by many long-time users and moderators, could be scaled back or discontinued as part of the company's ongoing crackdown on AI scraping. In a blog post, Reddit said unspecified "changes" were needed to protect the platform from "abusive scraping and spamming," and that it would migrate critical bots and moderator tools onto its modern infrastructure, though it stopped short of confirming Old Reddit's closure.

The move follows Reddit's decision in June to block logged-out access to Old Reddit, a change a company admin said is being rolled out "gradually" and which is not yet fully in effect. A spokesperson would not directly answer whether Old Reddit would be shut down entirely, saying only that the company is "exploring different options" with no fixed timeline. The announcement comes alongside plans to phase out Reddit's public API in favour of its more tightly controlled Developer Platform, continuing a trend that began in 2023 when API charges killed off third-party Reddit apps, as well as an expansion of its LLM-based moderation tool, Rules Hub, intended to eventually replace AutoMod.