Reddit search traffic slumps, will push visitor sign-ins to curb AI scraping

On October 29, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced plans to make signing in mandatory for most content, as the platform faces challenges from data scraping and a decline in search referral traffic. Huffman expressed concern that daily active unique visitors (DAUq) could decrease by a low double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter, dropping from the current 130 million.

Search engine referrals to Reddit decreased by over a million visits weekly in October. In the US, DAUq fell by 2% to 50.7 million. Reddit has licensed its data to AI companies like OpenAI and Google, but Huffman accused IPO-bound Anthropic, Perplexity AI, and three scraping companies of illegally collecting Reddit's data. Huffman stated that they will continue licensing their data intentionally but with guardrails to protect users and the business.

Despite a slowdown in revenue growth, Reddit's third-quarter revenue of $895 million exceeded analysts' average estimate of $878.4 million. The company plans to test a logged-in-only experience in select markets outside the US in the fourth quarter before wider implementation.