Reddit Moves to Require Logins after Search Referrals Drop 1M+ Per Week

Reddit is making login the default browsing experience, currently testing the change in select non-U.S. markets, after Google search referrals fell by more than one million visits per week in October. The referral decline shrank Reddit's logged-out user base: in Q2, 30.1 million of Reddit's 53.2 million U.S. daily users browsed without accounts, but U.S. daily users fell to 50.7 million in Q3. Reddit has warned that daily users could drop by a low-double-digit percentage in the next quarter due to AI search answers reducing clicks to third-party sites. Logged-in users are worth roughly three times logged-out users to advertisers because subscriptions and votes enable better ad targeting. A login requirement also makes Reddit harder to scrape, which could push AI companies toward paid data licensing agreements with Reddit.