The dream of an open internet continues to die following the news that Reddit will begin forcing people to be logged in to an account in order to browse its trove of arcane user insights and discussions. The reason seems clear: Google AI overviews are robbing the platform blind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile extraordinarily useful and powerful, AI search solves a different problem than Reddit,\u201d Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman told investors during the company\u2019s quarterly earnings call this week. \u201cAI does not fulfill people\u2019s fundamental need for community, connection, and belonging with other people, and it lacks context and nuance.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help protect \u201cthe Reddit corpus of data,\u201d the company will begin shifting to a \u201clogged-in only experience.\u201d Testing will begin in other countries in the fourth quarter before a switch is eventually flipped for every Reddit user everywhere beginning in 2027. Despite revenue and profits both growing during the third quarter, and the company claiming that logged-in users already account for 80 percent of Reddit\u2019s monetization, its stock fell off a cliff following the announcement.<\/p>\n
It nose-dived over 25 percent in after-hours trading after already being down significantly from the start of the year. Transforming Reddit into a \u201clogged-in only experience\u201d essentially undercuts its claims to being the \u201cfront page of the internet\u201d and will seemingly lead to a massive drop in casual users coming to the platform to exchange random answers to the most random questions.<\/p>\n