Reddit is now forcing users to log in to read their posts (terrible for a parasite?)

You found a Reddit post, you scroll down, read some answers and boom, this garbage pops up:

You can't close it, you are forced to log in:



For a while I thought it was only me, but there are tons of reports about this shit, it's something recent, maybe it's not affecting everybody yet.



It seems they are desperately forcing people to create accounts on Reddit before their Google agreement is not renewed. Once they lose this agreement, Reddit will lose relevance and it won't rank as higher as we are seeing right now. I'm not saying Reddit will become a MySpace, however they can become a not so interesting parasite. So, they are trying to get as many new users as possible before it happens. Does it make sense? Let me know.

Besides that, those pop-ups avoiding people to read all the messages, might be also affecting AIs. Is it possible? In recent days, OpenAI severely decreased the amount of citations related to Reddit. Is it just a coincidence or AIs are also facing difficulties scanning Reddit posts? Or are they simply staying away from Reddit? Is Reddit being slowly kicked out by Google and AI platforms or what?



I don't know, but with all this shit happening and Reddit implementing some draconian rules to ban everyone, even legit accounts while trying to hunt spammers, it appears to me that Reddit is becoming less and less interesting, especially compared to a couple years ago.

Now, if you use Reddit as a parasite, you have to be extremely careful with your accounts, it's very easy to be banned, they are very strict, and all that for what? If they are going to really force everybody to log in, this can be a massive hit, because most people will just go back to Google instead of creating an account, it's what I'm doing, I won't bother to create an account, some people will, some won't. I would say many leads coming from Google -> Reddit -> our website were people without a Reddit account, because Reddit posts were ranking for any kind of query, not only "what is the best crypto exchange reddit", nope, it was ranking naturally, without the "reddit" keyword included.

Anyway, this pop-up was the last nail in the coffin for me. Imagine using a Medium article as a parasite and then, people can't even read before an annoying pop-up interrupt them and force them to go back to Google? It was a great parasite until a few months ago, now those news are making me believe we are approaching a Reddit decadence as a parasite (not necessarily as a social media).

I've said this the last 2 weeks

Reddit is throwing spaghetti at the wall hoping something sticks


By this time next year..................... theres a high chance, reddit's activity rates will drop steeply . It will still be around, yes but at this rate they have no clue who their audience is , nor what they want, etc............

It wont be 'cool' and they will have missed their opportunity to seize the forefront of the web

But maybe they dont want it either

The login wall could hurt Reddit more than ppl think. A lot of its traffic comes from Google users who dont even have accounts. If they cant read the thread, they will just bounce. The AI citation drop is interesting too, tho it could be from changes in search/crawling rather than Reddit alone.

they should really stop the banning thing

Right, that login wall is super annoying. Most casual users coming from Google will just close the tab instead of creating an account. If they keep this up, traffic is definitely going to drop.

If Reddit now requires a login to view posts, that could make the site less accessible to visitors. It may also affect how easily people can find and view posts through search.

Yep, I’ve run into this too. Pretty annoying tbh, especially when you just clicked a Reddit result to quickly check something.

Most users create accounts if they want to participate in the discussion. If they block access, it's just like pay wall. Privacy is becoming a big concern and most people just run away from services they don't need. Reddit must create a need for users to login instead of blocking their access.

The login wall could make Reddit less effective for parasite SEO as users cannot easily open posts via Google. It will be interesting to see whether this impacts Reddit's traffic and rankings.

Reddit is pushing more towards paywall system. That’s why they’re push for creating more new accounts & banning them if they are not buying. By the way I have seen no comments or posts account getting banned; it’s not good policy but it seems to be working for them.

Yeah I've been seeing this on every post I look at. Even if you block the element with ublock, the page still stops scrolling, so you can't read further anyway. This popup appears on mobile and desktop.

It's a real shot in the foot for Reddit, IMO, and has been for my method of using it as a parasite, it's all but killed my traffic. Judging by the number of people participating in the threads I posted on, and the amount of traffic I got, I'd say it's probably a ratio of 9:1 of people viewing my posts who don't have reddit accounts, and those that do.

I really don't get their approach to spam either. My posts were completely relevant to each thread, and obviously relevant to people looking at the threads I posted in, otherwise I wouldn't have got the traffic I got. Just because some snot-nosed Reddit user thinks it's spam, doesn't mean everyone else does.

As for the collapse in chatGPT citations, I have a different take on it. I think because Reddit has swept up so many posts as spam, all the posts designed to get cited in AI have been deleted, therefore chatGPT simply lost all that data in one go, so it's not got anything to cite. They will probably increase again, but I don't feel it's a coincidence that collapse has coincided with Reddit's much touted anti-spam update they did recently.

I base this on what happened to me. I have paid users and used my own accounts to make posts across different subs. When accounts got banned, their posts would stay up, so the references to my site remained. The most recent one that got banned had all their posts deleted in one go, so my traffic was cut in half overnight. The ones that still get traffic are from accounts that got banned, over a year ago in some cases, but the posts have stayed up because reddit's systems haven't seemed to notice them.

It's funny how their recent stock drop is a result of Reddit admitting that search referrals are patchy. Well, no shit! What do you expect when you wipe out anything that doesn't conform to your ever-changing and narrow definition of what spam is, and you force an annoying popup in front of people to get them on to your bloated, shitty app.

Throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks is very appropriate for what Reddit is doing right now.

Yeah, that login wall makes Reddit less useful for parasite traffic. A lot of people coming from Google will just leave instead of logging in.

Not sure it affects AI crawlers the same way though. Could be a separate issue.

Parasite pages can rank all they want, but it means less if half the visitors leave at the login popup.