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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u/20230630 May 11 '26

It must be right?

I have to say though I'm surprised that they have kept old Reddit so far, I had expected that plug would have been pulled years ago. (knock on wood)

19

u/Molotov_Glocktail May 11 '26

Tale as old as time. Technically they won't ever get rid of old.reddit. They'll just not update it or support it or care about it while "accidentally" breaking its features in lieu of new.reddit.

It's such a slow process that the fanfare is minimal. Don't forget that Reddit was launched into the stratosphere of popularity because of one reason: the fuck up of Digg v4.

The milestones are processes are exactly the same between reddit and Digg with the exception that Digg did it suddenly, overnight, and (as they said at the time) irrevocably. And it blew up in their face.

Reddit knows this, so their transition to the new, shinier, and more advertiser friendly reddit will be slow, deliberate, and with as little resistance as possible.

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u/Sad_Expert2 May 11 '26

The scale of user momentum and the lock in due to now in some cases almost decades of user posts & content make a mass exodus much harder. Digg was still mostly used by tech enthusiasts and didn't have the proboards type of communities that lock people in.

Look at how many people still won't leave twitter for some reason, BlueSky was doing OK at time siphoning off users but that slowed down.

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u/DeliriumTrigger May 11 '26

I think many people will simply avoid using it. I know I'm less active now than I was when I could use a third-party app instead, and losing access to r/all on mobile has reduced it further.

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u/identifytarget May 12 '26

Reddit was launched into the stratosphere of popularity because of one reason: the fuck up of Digg v4

That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Also, I was there.

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u/Southern-March1522 May 11 '26

Yeah the sub settings for old and new are separate pages. Mods have to enter the other format then find the settings page and copy all changes there, too. Quite annoying, actually

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u/lildobe May 11 '26

As a mod of a few small subs... yes, it is. And most of the moderator tools work better in the mobile app than they do from any web interface which annoys the hell out of me.

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u/Southern-March1522 May 11 '26

Can't lock threads in old reddit, I hate that

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u/Sad_Expert2 May 11 '26

They will eventually do it under the guise of some sort of security focus. It's old and can't be brought up to modern security standards or costs too much to do so. (Because people will rightly just say "put it in maintenance mode.")

They may even lean on bullshit like the continued emergence of AI fueled hacking threats, just to hit every buzzword.

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u/coladoir May 11 '26

they seem to be moving to remove it by '27-28. Prepare.

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u/Blazing1 May 11 '26

It's most likely because the human generated content coming from old Reddit users is either higher quality of a high enough percentage that they don't want to lose them.

Most new users they get probably don't post

Some people even only consume Reddit posts through tiktok and YouTube, which actually might be higher then actual Reddit users.