Tell HN: Old Reddit Now Requires Login

anonova 34 days ago |

Can confirm that this started happening today.

> Log in to use old Reddit

> To keep Reddit safe, accounts are required to access old Reddit. Log in, or continue without an account on reddit.com.

I don't participate in Reddit conversions and only use old.reddit.com to browse some specific subreddits as a guest.

anenefan 34 days ago | |

It's been 9 days that way for myself but I visited their log on would be required announcement page 20 days ago, so my IP / fingerprint was probably mapped and thus first to be flagged. I noted at least one other comment at HN confirming they too had struck a request to log in the same day I found old.reddit effectively walled off. It's rare I find myself landing at reddit by way of a search, most times it is by way of following an interesting post from HN.

The new reddit site only serves me the OP of a thread (Probably my fault, my configuration I have blocked a couple of intrusive PII gathering services disguised as APIS and a bunch of other sites with intrusive scripts ) -- it's the comments where the value is at so reddit is now totally useless to me - I suppose I should get around to adding the site to my growing deny list.

Edit: clarity.

cosmicgadget 34 days ago | |

That sounds like just the kind of risky behavior that was a huge threat to Reddit! Glad they did something about checks notes people browsing from the open web.

jubilanti 34 days ago |

So who is going to make the xcancel version for old reddit?

edit: https://safereddit.com/ is an instance of https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib

autoexec 34 days ago | |

"Sadly, you must enable JavaScript to get past this challenge. This is required because AI companies have changed the social contract around how website hosting works. A no-JS solution is a work-in-progress."

One of the best things about old.reddit.com was that it didn't need JS. Now we need someone to make a safesafereddit.com that just lets people see reddit posts without JS enabled

AmazingEveryDay 34 days ago | |

I'd settle for a Safereddit Enhancement Suite. Hmm.

isaachh 34 days ago |

First I made a userscript that auto-redirects me to old.reddit, then they did this. So now I have my userscript fetch the .json version of the url, and render a minimal hackernews style UI instead of the bloated normal site.

arijun 34 days ago | |

Mind sharing the script? I am certainly not logging in just so they can track me better.

isaachh 33 days ago | | |

https://github.com/IsaacPushButton/reddit-reader-userscript

I got fable to whip it up, use at your own risk

arijun 33 days ago | | |

Thanks!

throwaway3060 34 days ago |

Suddenly started happening to me out of nowhere while browsing. Really does feel like one of the last pillars of the old internet just toppled - that reading is open to anyone. New Reddit is basically unusable.

Edit: I still am a strong believer in anonymous usage of the internet. Increasingly it feels like we've become an endangered species.

cosmicgadget 34 days ago |

Getting the same. I stuck around as a lurker cause some subs were still good. I'm definitely not creating an account or subjecting myself to new reddit.

I wonder if this was about killing old.reddit in two steps, forcing people to create accounts, or LLM scrapers.

Update: looks like they want LLMs to have to buy their data: https://web.archive.org/web/20260716201346/https://old.reddi...

ChrisArchitect 34 days ago |

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740217

(Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1ujtebf/logging_in...)

memcg 33 days ago |

I can still access https://old.reddit.com/ using Firefox with Ublock, NoScript Privacy Badger and Old Reddit Redirect addons.

Using Chrome I get: You've been blocked by network security. If you think you've been blocked by mistake, file a ticket below and we'll look into it. File a ticket

memcg 33 days ago | |

If I go to https://www.reddit.com/ using chrome then replace www with old it works.

sethops1 34 days ago |

I've been working on https://treehouse.net/

Not a direct substitute old.reddit.com in that we don't support creating custom communities, but the idea is to create something reminiscent of the original reddit, or perhaps a version of Hacker News with a more broad scope of topics. Oh, and you can filter out topics, like AI.

ChrisArchitect 34 days ago |

Cannot duplicate. What I'm getting is a temporary/false "You've been blocked by network security" page but refreshing then brings up the reddit page as per usual.

jaggs 34 days ago |

May I suggest - https://old.lemmy.world/?listingType=All&sort=New

BashiBazouk 33 days ago | |

Thanks for that. I lurk lemmy every once in a while but found it really hasn't hit a critical mass yet, but man, it's amazing how a good interface improves the situation. At the very least it's a good methadone for my suddenly cold turkey reddit addiction...

Is this unique to lemmy.world or does the "old" trick work on other servers?

jaggs 33 days ago | | |

Yeah, it's interesting how a familiar interface really improves the accessibility. I struggled with standard Lemmy because I didn't like the UI. I'm not sure if it works with other instances. I haven't tried.

arijun 34 days ago | |

Yeah lemmy is just too full of tankies for me. I mean, reddit was full of half baked political takes, but at least they didn't spout apologia for North Korea.

jaggs 33 days ago | | |

Really? I've been there for several years now, and not seen any of that stuff. You must be subscribed to the wrong kind of forums. :)

arijun 33 days ago | | |

I almost never log in to any of these sites (hence my problem with reddit requiring login), it would have been the front page. I will say I haven't gone to lemmy recently, so perhaps it's changed.

OTOH the worst offender [1] is lemmy.ml (run by lemmy's lead dev), and it's still federated and going strong.

[1] https://lemmy.world/post/29072279

jaggs 33 days ago | | |

Ah, I see. I only use Lemmy.world which has blocked .ml. The beauty of federation, eh?

arijun 33 days ago | | |

I don't think it has? https://lemmy.world/instances lists lemmy.ml under "linked instances", and not under "blocked instances."

ronsor 34 days ago |

Guess I'm not using it anymore

Melatonic 34 days ago |

Isnt this going to decrease a massive amount of traffic from Google searches and whatnot?

jubilanti 34 days ago | |

the regular reddit.com can still be accessed without a login, but that's the bloated webapp with tons of ads and tracking and takes dozens of MB to load over hundreds of network requests.

Melatonic 34 days ago | | |

Forgot I had auto redirects setup. So lame

baggy_trough 33 days ago |

I sadly lost the old reddit cookie on my iPad and now I can't get it back :(

erelong 34 days ago |

Is this truly the end?

Feels like a moment

kotaKat 34 days ago |

Also getting slammed with the "to keep Reddit safe" bullshit.

How do banned users access Old Reddit? Do they just Not?