Reddit plans login-first shift, starting with tests outside the US

Reddit announced plans on October 29 to move toward a primarily logged-in service. Its third-quarter shareholder letter sets out tests in selected markets outside the United States during the fourth quarter, with results informing the global design. It names neither countries nor a worldwide launch date.

CEO Steve Huffman wants visitors from search and shared links to see the linked content. A logged-out front page is also under consideration. Account-free access boundaries remain undecided.

Huffman cites personalization, advertising, safety regulation and data protection. Most unauthorized scraping uses logged-out access, he says. Signing in will continue to work without real names or real-world identities. Joining communities, voting and commenting already require accounts.

The plan accompanies falling search referrals. Reddit says October referrals dropped by more than one million per week on average, with the largest impact on logged-out and web visits. Huffman describes search becoming an AI-powered destination. That framing does not measure every lost referral as the result of a particular AI feature.

The audience exposed to a change is substantial. Official quarterly results report average daily active uniques, or DAUq, of 130.3 million: 53.5 million logged in and 76.8 million logged out. The metric averages unique identifiers visiting in a day over the quarter; logged-out visits are counted through identifiers too. US DAUq fell 2% year over year to 50.7 million, while international DAUq rose 24% to 79.6 million.

Total quarterly revenue rose 53% year over year to $895 million. Advertising revenue increased 54% to $847 million. Reddit’s public-content policy lists language-model makers, brand-monitoring businesses and researchers among licensees.

Reddit also points readers to app incognito mode. Current help documentation says this app-only reading mode keeps activity out of account recommendations, notifications and ad personalization. Account-linked participation is unavailable. It works in the iOS and Android apps.

Incognito has limits. Reddit may temporarily retain the session IP address solely to measure advertising performance. It does not change third-party, carrier or device data handling. Some regions requiring age assurance currently lack access. Five inactive minutes end the session, although experiments may vary that window.

The existing public-content policy, updated October 6, defines licensed material as public posts, comments, usernames, profiles and metadata. It excludes private messages, private or quarantined communities, non-public account information such as email and IP addresses, and browsing history. Contracts identify recipients and purposes, and restrict misuse such as sensitive personal profiling. Prohibited uses include facial recognition, credit checks and providing content for government surveillance. The policy still describes public content as accessible without an account, the existing arrangement against which the new login tests are being designed.

Deletion obligations also remain in place. A separate help page says automated tools notify licensees in real time when users delete content. Recipients must stop using or displaying it, including in products and services. Reddit helps integrate and verify the tools. These contractual controls cover licensees; unauthorized third-party copies remain outside their reach. Reddit says it can block access if it believes a licensee is ignoring deletion requests.