This is a major blow to the open web! For as long as I can remember, Reddit has embraced RSS feeds and public API access to users, apps, and developers, allowing the site to thrive. To start choking access after decades of open doors is really sad and feels like the start of Reddit's demise. https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/reddit-is-killing-rss-feeds-ending-public-api-access-because-of-ai-bots/
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@zackwhittaker
Reddits demise has been happening for 3-4 years. I don’t regret leaving in July, after 15 years.
@zackwhittaker Reddits demise started when they cut off 3rd party clients. How they decided to handle the issue added its share, too. Removing RSS feeds will just result in even fewer people participating there. Especially those who might add valuable information – which on the other hand gathers more ai bots to teach themselves 🤷🏻♂️
@zackwhittaker Reddits demise started when they cut off 3rd party clients. How they decided to handle the issue added its share, too. Removing RSS feeds will just result in even fewer people participating there. Especially those who might add valuable information – which on the other hand gathers more ai bots to teach themselves 🤷🏻♂️
@zackwhittaker
The best Reddit I've found is in a wayback machine.
@zackwhittaker Reddit doesn't want to share revenue (which increased anyway) and this greed is the reason for killing RSS and API, not AI.
@zackwhittaker Counterpoint: Fuck Spez and fuck Reddit.
They can keep feeding user content into the Slop Machine, but in the process they’re driving away the very people who will make new content.
@zackwhittaker as if that would stop any AI bot. Even uninstructed a bot will just quickly code a web scraper and continue.
Yesterday I asked one of the big AI models to help me with some music production. As the AI can't hear, it just coded some python scripts using numpy to implement FFT audio analysis. I did not ask it to do that, it just did it.
Life err AI finds a way.
@zackwhittaker Doesn’t most of Reddit’s revenue come from selling data to LLM vendors? Aren’t they just preventing people getting the product for free?
@zackwhittaker Zack, it’s a lot harder to slurp up user data via RSS!
bada bing!
@zackwhittaker I hate having internets.
@zackwhittaker Question for @Iconfactory @gedeonm and @bigzaphod is how will this impact tapestry? Tapestry is my sole app for consuming Reddit.
@zackwhittaker They'd already started making me log in just for having the nerve to go and look at a page. I can't see how there will be much left of it at this point.
Arrived on Reddit shores during the great Digg migration.
Hope it burns to the ground, frankly.
@zackwhittaker This bot invasion seems to have been going on for more than 18 months.