The Pulse
Reddit Shifts Toward Logged-In Access as Search Referrals Fall
Reddit plans to test a primarily logged-in experience outside the United States after search referrals fell by more than one million per week on average in October. CEO Steve Huffman says the change is meant to improve personalization, ad t
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
On October 29, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told users the company plans to make the site primarily a logged-in experience, a marked retreat from two decades of broad access without an account. The announcement came as Reddit reported that search referrals had fallen by more than one million per week on average during October. The company will test changes in selected markets outside the United States before deciding where to draw the line between open browsing and sign-in prompts.
Huffman calls the login shift a business decision
“I want to talk about a big change we're making on Reddit: we're going to evolve Reddit to being a primarily logged-in experience,” Huffman wrote in a post on Reddit. He said accounts give the company more signals for tailoring feeds and ads, while making it harder for unauthorized parties to scrape its data. Reddit will continue licensing its content through commercial agreements that, Huffman said, give the company more control over how that material is used.
“And I don’t know about you, but as someone whose life has been defined by the open internet, it’s a big change for me.”
Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder and CEO
Huffman also said Reddit does not need to know a user’s name or identity to require a login. The company plans to bring back an in-app incognito mode for private, read-only browsing and searching that does not affect a person’s logged-in account. Users will also be able to opt out of personalization, although Huffman said Reddit would work less effectively without it.
Search is weakening Reddit’s route to new users
Reddit said the drop in referrals accelerated late in the third quarter and hit logged-out and web traffic hardest, with some effects reaching logged-in and app users as well. The company’s October figure—more than one million fewer search referrals on average each week—comes amid broader changes in search, including AI-generated answers that can satisfy a query without a click to the original site. Reddit has not established that AI search alone caused the decline.
The company warned that, if the referral decline continues, daily active uniques could fall by a low-double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter from a base of about 130 million. That is a conditional forecast, not a reported decline: Reddit counted 130.3 million daily active uniques in Q3, up 12% from a year earlier. U.S. daily active uniques fell 2% year over year to 50.7 million, even as international users grew.
Logged-in users matter more to Reddit’s revenue
Reddit’s latest results show why the company wants more people to use accounts and its app. Third-quarter revenue rose 53% year over year to $895 million, including $847 million in advertising and $48 million in other revenue. Logged-in daily active uniques reached 53.5 million globally, up 7% year over year; logged-out daily active uniques were still larger, at 76.8 million, and grew 17%.
Those figures make the transition a trade-off, not a simple conversion of visitors into account holders. Logged-in users are more valuable for ad targeting and participation, but search visitors also bring new people to Reddit and can re-engage existing users. A stricter sign-in prompt could protect data and improve personalization while also adding friction for people following a link to a single discussion.
Reddit has not set the rules for logged-out visitors
Huffman said a logged-out front page remains useful and that visitors should be able to see posts shared with them or reached through search. He did not specify which communities or pages will require an account, and Reddit has not announced a worldwide rollout date. The tests outside the U.S. in the coming months are intended to help the company settle those boundaries and measure the effects on users, its business and the wider Reddit community.