There’s bad news for advocates of a more open web amid a slew of updates for moderators and developers announced Wednesday. Reddit is ending support for RSS feeds.
Reddit says that RSS is now a “common surface for large-scale scraping and automated exploitation,” which is why it has made the decision to scale back RSS feeds on its platform.
“We know RSS has long been a beloved part of the open web, and we’re grateful to everyone who used RSS to stay connected to Reddit,” the company said in an announcement, adding that the public API’s closure date is March 2027.
According to Reddit, support for RSS will end on November 13th.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access website updates in a standardized format. This format was especially popular during the blogging era because it offered a way to subscribe to new posts on a site in news-reading apps. Google used to run the most popular of these, but shut it down in 2013, handing over the market to companies like Feedly and other indie apps.
The decision to discontinue Reddit’s RSS feed comes at a time when the trove of user-generated content on the site’s forums has become a lucrative sideline for the company in the form of AI licensing deals.
In the second quarter, Reddit announced that its non-advertising “other revenue” rose 24% year-over-year to $43 million. No wonder Reddit doesn’t want to give that kind of data away for free.
For moderators who relied on RSS channels for their own alerts, Reddit recommends moving to the Discord Relay Devvit app. The company suggested that moderators and their teams review their settings and migrate their workflows before the November 13 shutdown date to avoid any disruption. However, Reddit said there is no substitute for using RSS feeds, which are used for feeds other than the moderator community.
Moderators have already expressed concerns about how this change will affect their workflow. When Reddit previously hinted that it was preparing to end RSS on the site, many people complained that Reddit would lose control. On the other hand, many users emphasized that RSS is a way they enjoy accessing Reddit’s content.
The RSS change was one of several updates the company issued on Wednesday. Another big change is the end of public APIs.
Access to the public API will also end by March 2027, impacting tools that used the API to programmatically access Reddit conversations, including social listening products, those used by researchers, and AI products such as AI assistants. Currently, these assistants can use Reddit to answer questions, but after they end public API access, they will need to have a commercial transaction with Reddit for that data.
Additionally, Reddit provided updates on Rules Hub progress and auto-mod changes, saying it was “adding safeguards” to the classic, text-heavy version of the site known as Old Reddit. The latter includes restricting access to logged-in moderators and recent users. Reddit also said the changes were necessary due to “unauthorized scraping and automated traffic.”
Reddit has announced that in the coming months, it will limit access for logged-in users to those who have used the old Reddit within the past six months. (Just as that news was announced, the company changed this from 90 days to 6 months.)
The company also called on developers building approved third-party apps and bots to register them with the company by January 12, 2027 to avoid confusion. After that date, Reddit will remove API access for non-registered developers.
After publication, Reddit updated the old Reddit “Recent Visits” period from 3 months to 6 months. Previous materials Reddit shared with TechCrunch said the period would be 90 days.
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