Reddit to require sign-ins for most content as Google AI cuts traffic

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced plans to require sign-ins for most content to deter data scraping, blaming Google’s AI search features for declining referral traffic. Reddit shares fell 18% in extended trading after the announcement. Huffman said search engine referrals dropped by over one million weekly during October, and total daily active unique visitors could fall by a low double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter from about 130 million. US daily active users fell 2% to 50.7 million, the first decline since Reddit went public in 2024. Reddit will test the logged-in-only experience in select non-US markets in the fourth quarter, ending two decades of open browsing. The company, which licenses data to OpenAI and Google, has sued Anthropic, Perplexity AI, and three scraping firms. Third-quarter revenue hit $895 million, beating estimates.