Reddit is moving to “a logged-in-only experience,” CEO says

In the future, you won’t be able to use Reddit without logging in.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman confirmed the impending change in a letter (PDF) to shareholders today about Q3 performance. He said that Reddit is shifting “to a logged-in-only experience,” adding:

Moving to primarily logged-in will ensure our users have the best Reddit experience possible, and can find the content and communities most relevant to them. It is better for our business because we will have more signals for ads targeting, and being logged-in leads to higher engagement generally. It also allows us to protect access to Reddit’s extremely valuable corpus of data, and helps us better adapt to emerging regulations around the world.

Huffman also said that the login requirement will help Reddit better retain new users.

Reddit will start testing the login requirement in “select,” non-US markets in Q4. The company will use those tests to decide what a logged-in-only Reddit will look like “globally,” per Huffman.

“Pretty much all of the major ad-based platforms have gone through this transition. We are excited and moving quickly,” the CEO added, noting Reddit’s intent to become a “direct daily habit for every Internet user.”

The impending requirement comes as Reddit search referral traffic “was down meaningfully in Q3,” Huffman wrote. The largest hit came from logged-out and web traffic, and the overall trend has continued into Q4.

“During October, we have seen that search traffic has dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week. If this rate of decline continues, current trends would suggest that total DAUqs [or daily active unique users] could fall in Q4, by a low-double-digit percentage from our current base of 130 million DAUqs,” Huffman wrote.

Reddit’s average number of DAUqs increased 12 percent year over year (YoY) in Q3.

Huffman showed interest in Reddit becoming less dependent on search referrals.

“Logged-in and app DAUq are our most valuable users, and they are our primary focus,” he wrote.

Reddit has been testing a login requirement on desktop since at least August, per user reports.

Keeping track of Redditors

The login requirement is one of many changes that Reddit has made over the past couple of years aimed at growing its user base of its website and mobile apps that also make it easier to track user activity.

Earlier this year, Reddit began testing a requirement that people use one of its mobile apps to access its mobile website. It plans on expanding testing.

“Currently only about 13 percent of eligible mobile web users are seeing the app conversion prompt, so this has room to scale,” Huffman said.

As of July, Reddit requires users to be logged in to use Old.Reddit.com. More recently, it blocked access to Old Reddit for people who haven’t logged in within the previous six months.

Reddit also effectively shuttered most third-party apps by making its API expensive in 2024.

Combined, the changes should make it significantly easier for Reddit to understand who uses Reddit and why, which it says will help manage things like AI scraping and evolving search habits.

The changes should also help Reddit understand ad effectiveness and gain additional insight into user activity, while making it more appealing to advertisers and investors.

Reddit reported a net income of $283 million (a 74 percent YoY increase) off of $895 million in revenue (a 53 percent YoY increase) in Q3.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.