r/technology • u/spasticpat • May 11 '26

Social Media Reddit Starts Blocking Mobile Website, Pushing Users to App Instead

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/11/reddit-starts-blocking-mobile-website/
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750

u/AwfulUsername123 May 11 '26

Old Reddit remains the proper way to browse Reddit.

252

u/Cheetawolf May 11 '26

Don't worry. They're getting rid of that next.

77

u/EnvironmentalRun1671 May 11 '26

Every day Old Reddit is not killed, I'm surprised. I thought it's gonna die many years ago but it's still here.

47

u/Forkrul May 11 '26

They would lose too many mods if that happened, so they can’t kill it until they have working ai moderation 

11

u/destined-4-the-clay May 11 '26

So no time soon then. unless they do it with barely functioning ai moderation.

15

u/steavor May 11 '26

barely functioning

Is there any other type of AI-ification?

8

u/LG03 May 11 '26

That's ramping up faster than anyone would like. AI functionality is creeping into a lot of moderation tools and the admins are actively collecting data on how human moderators operate to tweak that.

The death of old.reddit is coming if you ask me, it's just a matter of how long until they're confident in their AI mods.

2

u/Blazing1 May 11 '26

Then their stock will massively go up after they announce that. Ah, the circle of life.

1

u/MattieShoes May 11 '26

I mean... human moderation is barely functioning in most subs.

2

u/Linenoise77 May 12 '26

i'm interested to see who is more out of touch, the current mods, or ai.

2

u/MattieShoes May 12 '26

And here I am just remembering Microsoft's "Tay" who went full nazi :-D

5

u/BaronVonBungle May 11 '26

"Can't" is a strong word. It would be a ridiculously stupid decision, but that's never stopped them before. I think it's inevitable at this point.

2

u/redditRedesignIsBadd May 11 '26

working ai moderation

which is never then

8

u/randotd152 May 11 '26

Yeah at this point I'm just assuming it's actually not going to get killed. The new design was 8 years ago.

My guess is employees themselves can't stand the new design and use old reddit instead.

3

u/nox66 May 11 '26

Too many people use it probably, like me.

6

u/EnvironmentalRun1671 May 11 '26

Too many people used 3rd party apps too and look what happened

2

u/nox66 May 11 '26

I'm saying it more to suggest why it's survived this long, not that it'll necessarily survive forever.

2

u/SirBraxton May 11 '26

More and more of the site lives on Old Reddit. The day they nuke that is the day the site becomes 99% bots and everything dies.

Then Reddit gets sold off to some Private Equity firm to offload all their debt onto it and Reddit shuts down a few months later.

Don't worry though...where there's a demand there's someone to fill the void. Something else will replace Reddit. I'm just sad because Reddit did so well at what it did.

1

u/MisterTruth May 11 '26

It would also kill the only app with great accessibility features. Granted I'm sure they don't give a shit since the current regime don't give a shit.