Reddit to Shut Down RSS Feeds Over AI Scraping Concerns

Reddit has announced that it will discontinue support for RSS feeds on November 13, 2026, as part of a broader effort to restrict automated access to content on the platform. The company said RSS has increasingly become a channel for large-scale scraping and automated abuse. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, allows users and applications to automatically receive updates from websites without directly visiting them, making it a long-standing part of the open web.

The decision will affect both ordinary users and moderators who rely on RSS to monitor Reddit communities. Reddit said moderators using RSS for alerts can move to tools such as the Discord Relay application on its Developer Platform. However, the company said there will be no replacement for people who use RSS to follow communities they do not moderate. This means users who depend on external RSS readers to track Reddit discussions will need to find alternative ways to follow those communities.

Reddit is also preparing to shut down its public API in stages, with remaining public access expected to end in March 2027. New requests for public API access will stop after October 31, while Reddit plans to begin removing access from unregistered applications and users from January 12, 2027. The changes will affect third-party applications, research tools, social-listening services and AI products that programmatically access Reddit conversations.

The company says the restrictions are necessary because of increasing automated traffic and unauthorized scraping. Reddit has also introduced tighter restrictions for its classic Old Reddit interface, with access eventually limited to logged-in users who have used Old Reddit within the previous six months, while moderators will retain access. The platform said these measures are intended to reduce automated abuse and scraping activity.

The changes also come as Reddit places greater commercial value on its user-generated data, including through licensing arrangements involving artificial intelligence companies. Reddit reported that its revenue outside advertising increased 24% year over year to $43 million in the second quarter of 2026. The company’s decision to close open access routes could therefore reshape how developers, researchers and AI services obtain Reddit data, with commercial agreements increasingly becoming the route for organisations seeking programmatic access to the platform’s content.