posted in Technology

Reddit forces login to access old.reddit.com

As of a few minutes ago old.reddit.com now seems to requre logging in to access it.

Shame as it was still the best place to browse for info about some niche interests.

Edit: Seems like they might be testing the change as it is hit or miss at the moment.

Edit: Adding this to My flilters in uBlock Origin seems to fix the issue for the time being:

||reddit.com^$header=referer:

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/reddit-signals-ominous-upcoming-changes-for-old-reddit-com/
the logo of Reddit on a smartphone screenArs TechnicaReddit signals ominous upcoming "changes” for old.reddit.comReddit says the beloved site is used for some "bad behavior."
Edited ⁨⁨Aug⁩ ⁨11⁩, ⁨2026⁩, ⁨16:49⁩⁩enPage

Replying to @⁨BuckFutter@timeyak.com⁩

If you allow me to do a bit of self-promotion: code.mschae23.de/mschae23/mlmym (this is my fork of the software running on old.lemmy.world).

It’s a different frontend rather than just a theme, so it needs to be set up separately (similar to lemmy-ui). If you have any questions, feel free to ask me :)

Summary card of repository mschae23/mlmym, described as: a familiar desktop frontend for lemmy.
fork of https://github.com/fedihosting-foundation-forks/mlmymmschae's git servermlmyma familiar desktop frontend for lemmy. fork of https://github.com/fedihosting-foundation-forks/mlmym

Replying to @⁨UniversalBasicJustice@quokk.au⁩

Steve is a jealous bitch and has made it harder to find archives of that content which he does not nor has ever owned. He’s like Smaug but with brain damage and an incredibly tiny penis.

Here’s one, you’ll have to hunt to find the big ones at this point.

academictorrents.com/…/85a5bd50e4c365f8df70240ffd…

Academic Torrentsreddit_dataReddit Comments from 2005-12 to 2017-03 Downloaded from . You can find a current list of SHA-sums there to verify this torrent s downloads. Intended use is for scientific / non-commercial purposes. Example code to work with the data: , Info Hash: 85a5bd50e4c365f8df70240ffd4ecc7dec59912b

Replying to @⁨floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩

These are Pushshift torrents from 2005 to 2025: https://sciop.net/datasets/reddit. There are two data sets, one by month and the other by subreddit. Each is about 3.5 TB compressed and based on the compression ratio I’ve seen, about 30 TB uncompressed. This is without any sort of media, just text.

Reddit sent AcademicTorrents a request to take them down so AI models couldn’t use them as a way to avoid paying Reddit hundreds of millions of dollars for training data.

sciop.netReddit Comments/Submissions - Dataset - SciOpPreserving Public Information

Replying to @⁨fizzle@quokk.au⁩

Yeeeesss…, but typically it is easier to determine how reliable the person is from the test of the context.

Since Gemini is fed by the reason directly or might be fun exercise to ask it about yourself and while in some questions it will answer correctly or just loves to invent new things.

This works especially well if the person owning the account did not worry as much about privacy. So you hear many true things and also a lot of bullshit.

Replying to an earlier post

typically it is easier to determine how reliable the person is from the test of the context.

sure. that’s an advantage of reading off reddit.

an advantage of asking an LLM is that it can consider multiple reddit posts and stack overflow and whatever else.

you’re right that there’s an eternal problem of determining whether information is accurate or just confidently incorrect, but I don’t think that applies exclusively to chat bots.

Replying to @⁨eleijeep@piefed.social⁩

I promise you your definition of worthless is far different than an investors

The stock market is overwhelmingly owned by about 10% of Americans who tend to be on the very wealthy side and the “mindless capitalism drones who simply want number to grow” side. They just see user growth and applaud. They love this change and all the changes Reddit has made over the past few years because it means harder to scrape for free and more likely to convert casual browsers to users

What is potentially killing Reddit (and twitter, Facebook, etc) is that advertisers are starting to lose patience with bot activity, which is the overwhelming amount of content on social media. The misleading statistic that those companies throw out is that bots make up a (relatively) small amount of accounts, which is arguably true, but sidesteps that those bots post like crazy. Thus the “power user” effect, where 5-20% of the user base makes up like 90+% of content. Advertisers are getting wise to the fact that an overwhelming number of social media interactions are just nothing (and no one they can sell to) and they’re starting to demand better analytics as well as run their own

This is where Reddit is potentially screwed; meta has dozens of other things to fall back on besides ad revenue. Twitter has Elon propping it up. But this is still pretty wishful thinking, the reality is that Reddits valuation will likely be propped up by institutional investors for years, maybe decades, on the hope of something that never comes (see: Tesla). The quality of the site is essentially irrelevant

Replying to @⁨hirihit640@sh.itjust.works⁩

RedLib presently spoofs the OAuth tokens and behavior of the official Android app to access the website, so they are kind of doing something like that already.

The challenge for instance operators is routing the traffic appropriately to avoid the inevitable rate limiting from Reddit for popular RedLib instances.

Instance operators end up using a variety of approaches to get around this such as having multiple RedLib instances each with its own IP so that if one becomes rate limited, their site can switch over to another instance while the rate limit cools down.

Replying to @⁨fizzle@quokk.au⁩

lemmy.worldReddit forces login to access old.reddit.com - Lemmy.WorldAs of a few minutes ago old.reddit.com [http://old.reddit.com] now seems to requre logging in to access it. Shame as it was still the best place to browse for info about some niche interests. Edit: Seems like they might be testing the change as it is hit or miss at the moment. Edit: Adding this to My flilters in uBlock Origin seems to fix the issue for the time being: ||reddit.com^$header=referer:

Replying to @⁨Pechente@feddit.org⁩

Lemmy simply lacks a wide range smaller niche communities that exist on Reddit i.e. odd hobbies, smaller sports niches, etc.

I’d rather that I didn’t have to keep using Reddit for those smaller communities, but I have replaced 80% of my Reddit usage, so I’m not complaining.

When this is brought up, the typical responses is the well-meaning suggestion to “start it yourself” or “be the first”, except that hasn’t been fruitful in my experience.

The communities that I still use Reddit for, are already present on Lemmy and have been open for years, but they lack the amount of user necessary to make them worthwhile.

Replying to @⁨captain_spicard@lemmy.world⁩

Some tips:

  • We do have some trolls, we’re getting more popular. If you feel like someone is picking on you, those are them.
  • Active is the default, but can seem less active because the active posts stay up longer. I made my default Hot, but then I check Active and Top 6 Hours.
  • You’re probably going to go through a withdrawel. It varies by person, but mine took about a week or two.

Welcome.

Replying to @⁨Redacted@lemmy.world⁩

For the unfortunate times the info you need is only available on Reddit:
Get LibRedirect for your browser and enable Reddit in the settings.

The Redlib frontend is so much nicer to use on mobile than having to zoom and pan around non-stop in old.reddit

libredirect.manerakai.comLibRedirect – Privacy-friendly RedirectorA web extension that redirects YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc. requests to alternative privacy-friendly frontends

Replying to @⁨Redacted@lemmy.world⁩

I haven’t participated in reddit in quite awhile. But I still lurk on some niche communities, and often the site is the best result from search results. For those like me, I recommend redlib. It’s a reddit front-end that lets you browse reddit without the abusive behavior. It won’t allow you to post or comment, but you can still browse.

Reddit lost access to my comment contributions when their AI banned me for stupid reasons. They lost what ad revenue they could get from me when they blocked old reddit.

The harder you squeeze, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

 Private front-end for Reddit . Contribute to redlib-org/redlib development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHubGitHub - redlib-org/redlib: Private front-end for Reddit Private front-end for Reddit . Contribute to redlib-org/redlib development by creating an account on GitHub.

Replying to @⁨keyez@lemmy.world⁩

Yeah you can run it yourself, of there are some public instances that seem to work well enough. I imagine it’s going to be a long term cat-and-mouse game between reddit and the reddit front ends. Reddit will figure out a way to break them, then the devs will find a workaround. Rince and repeat.

If anyone knows of a similar tool to access Facebook marketplace, I would be very interested.

Replying to @⁨Redacted@lemmy.world⁩

My old account was banned from reddit a bit over a year ago. I don’t remember what I said that caused it, but it was anti-Musk.

I used to contribute a ton to that site, but after the ban I didn’t bother making a new account. I just leeched the site using old.reddit and had ad-block on. I found my use was reduced over the last few months because it’s just recycled posts these days.

I’m not creating an account just to browse old.reddit and see memes from 3 years ago.

Replying to @⁨jnod4@lemmy.ca⁩

The US was the first place smartphones took off and in the first couple years iPhone was the smartphone, so the initial set of adopters got iPhones because android wasn’t really a consideration. Then the network effect, people got what their friends or family had. Also, since a lot of people get their phones payed for through their cellular carrier contract, they not super price sensitive since the cost was buried in a monthly bill.

So lots of people are used to IOS, and don’t see a reason to switch. Especially now with the one major differentiator, walled garden vs open platform, is disappearing with Google locking down their platform.

Replying to @⁨megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone⁩

Once Android bootloaders got locked down I jumped ship. I loved custom ROMs. I also used to side load a lot of apks/emulate games. Now my Steam Deck is my dedicated emulation hand held, before that a modded 3DS. My only reasons to stay on Android disappeared.

Also iMessage is just so much better than allo/gmessages/hangouts/etc. I waited for over a decade for Google to create and stick with an ecosystem.

I loaded all my music on Google play music, then it was google music all access subscriptions, then it was YouTube music.

Tried to get the family into hangouts video, then it changed to duo+allo, then they killed allo so half the family abandoned duo…

It’s an endless cycle with Google. The kill more apps than most companies will ever create. Nobody has any buy in with their ecosystem because it’s dogshit.

Replying to @⁨megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone⁩

in the first couple years iPhone was the smartphone

Blackberry was the smartphone in the first half of the '00s. And circa 2005 even Windows Mobile smartphones were gaining some traction (by “smartphone” I mean devices that are essentially handheld computers that can run apps and do a lot more than just calls and texting). They both got swamped by the iPhone because RIM and Microsoft were short-sighted idiots who failed to see the potential market and saw no need to improve their devices much, until it was too late. The iPhone wasn’t the first, it was the best (at the time at least).

Replying to @⁨jnod4@lemmy.ca⁩

When iPhone launched it was targeted at the general public.

Blackberry had successfully dominated the businesses. In apps, texting, e-mailing etc they were light-years ahead of everyone else at the time. Ther had a bit of a learning curve to figure out but it got the job done. Many of the things that the iPhone became famous for were blackberry inventions. They were also highly customizable with tons of options where you could tweak all sorts of stuff aka pretty complicated.

So Apple went after the consumer market where they had a major fan base built up from the iPod. The thing about the iPod that set it apart from other MP3 was it was extremely simple to use. Like your 50 year old MBA boss could use it simple (if someone loaded the MP3’s for him) and no customization.

So the phone they made was about the same size as an iPod, and extremely simply to use. No customization because that created complexity. It was all tightly controlled.

Pretty soon it became the dominant phone in the market because as the current president shows, too many americans are fucking stupid. It remains the dominant phone because too many americans are fucking stupid.

It’s a much more complex phone today but don’t worry, most americans don’t know how to use all the features anyway because they are too fucking stupid.

Replying to @⁨The_v@lemmy.world⁩

I think one of the main reasons Blackberry was swiftly killed off by the iPhone was that their devices had tiny non-touch screens that used 16-bit color, and RIM were unwilling to move on from that until it was far too late. The other reason is that the Blackberry app development environment was orders of magnitude more atrocious than anything else I worked with in my 25-year career. The development environment for iPhones was the second-worst but still massively better than Blackberry; even if RIM had moved to upgrade their devices, they never could have gotten anyone to develop apps for them.

Replying to @⁨HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve moderated a subreddit for about 15 years now, it’s built up to ~40K members and ~100K visitors per week, ~1M views per month, and over 95-99% of that traffic is mobile (varies by the day). New Reddit (desktop) runs 0.5-3%, and old.reddit doesn’t even register in the bar graphs. Still, my shortcuts all go to old.reddit.com - and not just for moderation, but it’s also how I browse reddit.com.

If they cut off my old.reddit.com interface, I’ll likely abandon my moderator’s post - no telling what happens to that community after that happens.

Replying to @⁨cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works⁩

Before the IPO, close to 100% of old.reddit likely contributed. For submitting, the old.reddit interface had better options for the experienced user. It was faster and easier to submit complex longer comments and posts.

The interface isn’t that great for reading comments/post. The third party phone apps did it better.

Besides you had to have a tiny bit of experience with the platform to know how to find that setting. Not something most casual readers who hit the site via a search engine would know to do.

Since the IPO it’s likely mostly few old-timers checking the niche subs. Probably very little engagement. Honestly, it’s likely still around because of some critical tool for moderators or bots that would be extremely expensive to upgrade. Definitely not because they care about the user.

Replying to @⁨KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca⁩

There’s an interesting thing about scale… At 40K subscribers (collected over 15 years), my subreddit is pretty small niche. I tried duplicating it on the Digg reboot last year (yes, Digg sucked, sucks, and will continue to suck for the foreseeable future, but it was an informative experiment anyway)… because the niche is so narrow, and the Digg user base was so small, it never flipped over into growth mode. I’d promote it, get a couple of posts and a couple of subscribers, then crickets. After several rounds of that I walked away from new Digg. Meanwhile, on reddit with its billion+ users, 100 million+ active daily, the narrow niche continues to grow and because it has enough content contributing users, it’s not my personal soap box, it’s a truly user maintained community. But, that 90-9-1 rule definitely applies, probably even more skewed in my experience: 40K subscribers, probably less than 40 occasionally active content posters - an average of maybe 4 new posts per day, but… 40 posters are enough to keep the 40K engaged and growing.

Replying to @⁨Redacted@lemmy.world⁩

This news finally convinced me to make a Lemmy account so I can participate a little more instead of lurk. That, and generally how awful Reddit has been becoming for like, several years at this point, since the IPO.

I’ve swapped out RedReader on my phone’s home screen with Boost; though I think it’ll take some time to break the Reddit addiction.

I am looking forward to seeing Lemmy’s growth!

Replying to @⁨Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone⁩

Yeah, it’s quite active now, how exciting! I started browsing it just like I did RedReader last night and it didn’t feel like I was missing out on news or conservations. Also I like the Boost UI in some ways more than RedReader’s, so I’m sure that’s helping make the transition easier lol. Reddit really shot itself in the foot destroying all the popular 3rd party apps, reddit is fun was my beloved. RedReader is nice to have still available, but it honestly doesn’t hold a candle to rif’s nice UI/UX. Boost being basically on par with rif for me is making letting go of reddit all the more easier.

Replying to an earlier post

Welcome to the last human holdout on the world wide web.

I believe Boost Has Ads right? Im using Summit by @idunnololz@lemmy.world and its phenomenal. It has no ads and is highly customisable or at least the parts you would want to customise are. Its UI is up to date and feels right at home with the rest of Android Apps. Maybe you can give it a try, or not if Boost works for you. :)

play.google.comSummit for Lemmy and PieFed - Apps on Google PlayA fast and easy to use app for Lemmy and PieFed

Replying to an earlier post

I have a similar story, but in response to their action against RIF, i just started lurking old.reddit without an account (as matter of principle, I stopped using my account). Now I’ve finally made the switch, but am having trouble navigating here. What are your fav communities on lemmy, if I may ask? Honestly quite happy that they removed my access to reddit, as now I can participate in dedicated forums like in the internet of old, before the massive internet hubs AKA reddit, insta, fb etc :)

Replying to @⁨Wav_function@lemmy.world⁩

That’s very true, for now.

At this moment Reddit is existing on its former reputation. There are a host of like internet megalithic platforms that are now not even distant memories. Once they outlive their former utility they fade pretty quickly. Think of MySpace, Friendster and Yahoo Groups. Even Facebook is circling the plughole, but it may take a while before disappearing due to its former dominant position.

Replying to @⁨slickgoat@lemmy.world⁩

I thought that it had evolved into a bot parliament.

It did. The moderation filters that are supposed to ban people for rule breaking are automated by bots and the appeals are also ran by bots. They made it so all accounts are tied to a single, making it so if you had alts to bypass the ban, they banned those too and don’t give you any time to appeal again.

There’s also too many things you can get banned for now and because it’s all automated now, Lemmy, is the last vestige of being able to speak your mind and there’s no hive mind here.

well not as ready to use their stingers here and down votes don’t mean shit here like at least if you’re down voted here, you’re not hidden into an oblivion and your comment shadow banned.

Reddit is a hive-mind bullshit area where if you don’t agree on everything you’re attacked in a way where if you retort to what could very well be be perceived as cyber bullying, you’re banned. If you retort to anything by speaking your mind, you’re banned or blocked from the community.

It’s full of pieces of shit, even the bass guitar community, it’s all people telling other people who go there for advice to go to another forum or identifying bass guitars that google lens can figure out by model number.

Replying to @⁨ms_lane@lemmy.world⁩

it’s hiveminds divided by instance.

which decentralize them to their own communities but again you can at least disagree here and it will start a meaningful conversation or something that will make you think further, (I’ve had better comments that turned into conversations here than reddit), not down voted 20 times, your comment shadow banned and your opinion never seen.

down voted 20 times, your comment shadow banned and your opinion never seen.

is not a community it’s a hivemind. here, there’s communities and some have hiveminds but not all of them and most of them don’t. Like you can say your new here and be welcomed and not just like be shut up. I could get down voted 50 times here and someone will still see what I said and that’s what matters.

It’s relaxing here and it feels like I could ask something and get real responses or when I get called out for not knowing something here I go and look it up. I just think this place has that feeling of I can just chill and it’s nice.

Replying to @⁨cdf12345@lemmy.zip⁩

Not OC, but I’ll sometimes take 2 a day in the summer. I’m pretty oily. Showering in the morning is fine for my skin feelings through the day, but it means I’m oiliest overnight and my sheets will show it. If I shower before bed, I end up feeling uncomfortably greasy by dinner the next day. So, two showers keeps me feeling acceptable. Summers typically hover around 30C and 60%+ humidity for two months, on top of additional outdoor activities.

Or, I guess, shortest alternative answer, I know several people that shower right after morning exercise and are otherwise night showerers.

Replying to an earlier post

I run a few small communities on the fediverse, and its tough trying to start one up. Granted I try to keep mine canadian focused, but its an uphill battle either way. I was never one to volunteer or be an admin of a community, but I wanted to get the ball rolling somehow. Very disheartening to realize I’m the only one posting in the community, esp because I’m just a lurker at heart.

Replying to @⁨Capybara_mdp@reddthat.com⁩

Some off the top of my head:

!movies@lemmy.ml

!movies@lemmy.world

!Art_Alchemist_Guild@lemmy.today

!Dullsters@dullsters.net

!battlemaps@lemmy.world

!boardgames@sopuli.xyz

!rpgmemes@ttrpg.network

There are certainly more! Tell me your particular interests, and it’s very likely they have communities too. Anything from anime to documentaries, from woodworking and knitting to cast iron, and from D&D to Pathfinder!

Replying to an earlier post

Reddit has gotten really lame, there’s always been saddos who troll through entire post history’s when they can’t win an argument.

Lately they’ve changed stratagies to calling people underage instead hoping mods delete accounts or something I guess. It just comes across as absolutely pathetic to me.

But yeah Reddit is definitely breaking old.reddit on purpose and will probably be just mostly bots soon .

Replying to @⁨Teknikal@anarchist.nexus⁩

I have a theory that only shitstains complain about “people digging through post history”. Let’s put it to the test:

Being from the UK I actually support Nuking them if they try it again, the Falklands are all British Citizens and they voted on it fairly, let them revote if they like.

Well, there you have it. No wonder you don’t want people looking at your public post history. You’re in favor of using nuclear weapons against Argentina for a land dispute. Lmao. Theory confirmed.

Replying to @⁨velma@sh.itjust.works⁩

On Reddit I mean. There are many tool for it like roastdit.kadoa.com especially used by right-wingers. (disclaimer I do not know what the exact tool they use is, probably not that one)

RoastditRoastdit - Your Reddit Wrapped & AI RoastGet your Reddit Wrapped: an AI roast of your profile, top subreddits, vibe check, and predictions for next year. Free, no login.

Replying to @⁨Redacted@lemmy.world⁩

I found something interesting when I check a few hours ago. I was logged out to set the stage. I goto the main page it works. I use the search bar to find a sub and it works. But all the links on that subs page to related subs direct you to the “You have to log in”

So I was like, hmm what if I type one of these links into the search bar and see if I can get the link that way? It worked I could access the link that previous required a log in

I’m sure they will close that loophole and reddit will continue its decline…

Replying to an earlier post

Reddit has some cool communities that don’t quite exist elsewhere, and even though I’ve found old-school forums for some of them, the vibe is different (usually older people who are often retired and can’t envision not having money or free time).

I used to pay a sub to Reddit but stopped back when they shafted Apollo. I wonder how things might have gone had Reddit focused on its community rather than the sad process of enshitificafion.

Replying to an earlier post

In five years my reddit account won’t need verification since it’s currently 13 years old!

But yeah there’s a bunch of solid info and guides on there, niche subjects. I browse some niche subs sometimes but I refuse to interact, not even up or downvote. Sometimes someone asks a question and it hurts to not be about to post the answer, but I only actively use Lemmy and forums now.