And while I personally love the AI overviews when doing research, that data has to come from somewhere. And a lot of websites aren’t happy that their data is being used as a resource and part of the AI training.
Reddit has been battling this for years now, and it seems like it’s going to make a major stand with a new change coming soon. Steve Huffman, the co-founder and current CEO of Reddit shared the news on the platform, which will look to move to a “logged-in experience.”
This could be a big change
This move could force people who want access to sign up and sign in to the platform in order to explore the vast space that is Reddit. Personally, I don’t think that this is a problem at all. You can customize the experience, save important notes, comment, and ask questions.
According to Huffman, personalization is an important part of the Reddit experience. By having people log in, Reddit can curate content and help “surface what’s most relevant.” And as stated before, “joining communities, voting, commenting, and participating are all fundamental to the Reddit experience.”
Protect the data that makes Reddit what it is
Naturally, this new change is meant to protect Reddit as well. Huffman shares that “access to Reddit’s data corpus has to be intentional. Today, the vast majority of unauthorized access to Reddit (basically the scraping and stealing of Reddit’s data) happens through our logged-out experiences.”
Now, Reddit doesn’t require much to create an account. You just need to provide an email, create a username, and enter a password. It doesn’t need your personal information or any kind of fallback like a phone number. So, for most people, this really shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, you can choose not to provide that information and just skip Reddit altogether.
There’s still some privacy available
Although you will have to log into the platform to use it, Huffman does share that the brand has “rebuilt and are re-releasing incognito mode in our app. When this is on, it’s truly private. You can browse and search Reddit without affecting your logged in account. It’s read-only, but I think it’s a better, more private experience than what others in the market are offering.”
When is this all going down?
There isn’t a hard timeline for when this will be implemented, but you can expect it to come sooner rather than later. Huffman does say there is a balance to strike when moving to a “logged-in experience.” He goes on to say that “the front page being available logged-out is useful and important.”
“And we, of course, want people to be able to share posts, and for visitors arriving from search or other external sources to see the content that’s being linked to.” Naturally, some testing will need to be involved, and this will begin in “select markets outside the US” in the coming months.
With so much going on, it’s only natural that websites evolve and adapt to protect their content. Reddit has been the place to go if you’re looking for information from random people across the internet. And for the most part, the results have been pretty good. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always ask, and someone might have the answer.
