Reddit kills RSS feeds and public API to block AI bots

Reddit announced a major tightening of its data ecosystem, revealing plans to terminate RSS feed support on November 13 and completely shut down its public API by March 2027. The company attributed the decision to "abusive scraping and automated traffic" driven largely by AI bots. By closing these avenues, Reddit aims to protect its platform from unauthorized data harvesting while steering commercial entities toward paid licensing agreements.

The shift highlights Reddit's growing focus on monetizing its vast repository of user discussions. During the second quarter, the platform's non-advertising revenue, which includes AI data licensing, surged 24% year-over-year to reach $43 million. Once public API access ends in 2027, academic researchers, social listening tools, and AI assistants will no longer have free programmatic access to Reddit conversations, requiring them to secure commercial contracts instead. Developers of approved third-party applications and bots must register their tools with the company before January 12, 2027, to maintain access.

For community moderators and power users, the loss of RSS feeds disrupts long-standing workflows used for tracking updates and managing subreddits. Reddit is advising moderators to transition to the Discord Relay Devvit app before the November deadline, though it acknowledged there is no direct replacement for external RSS feeds. Additionally, Reddit is restricting access to its legacy interface, Old Reddit, to logged-in moderators and users who have active accounts that accessed the classic site within the last six months—an extension from an initially planned 90-day window.