Reddit will become a "logged-in only experience," and the company plans to move fast, beginning testing soon in regions outside the US before flipping the switch globally.
The popular community website—home to a great many official and unofficial gaming message boards—lost one million search engine referrals per week on average in October, CEO Steve Huffman said on an investor call today.
The culprit, of course, was AI. A Google search that might once have led someone to a 14-year-old Reddit thread containing the answer to a rare household cleaning problem is now likely to present that answer in an AI summary, no click required.
"Google has really shifted in their relationship with the rest of the internet," Huffman said during a Q&A.
The CEO emphasized, however, that most of Reddit's revenue (over 80%) comes from logged-in and app users, and said that the company will focus on establishing the site as "a direct daily habit" that doesn't rely on search traffic.
Efforts in that direction include algorithmic feeds, improved app design and performance, AI-powered moderation tools, and "new experiences like games and visual podcasts," the latter referring to, I believe, a feature that uses generative AI to turn posts into videos.
The switch to a logged-in only experience will also help "protect access to Reddit's extremely valuable corpus of data," Huffman said.
Reddit currently has AI training arrangements with OpenAI and Google. In the Q&A portion of the call, Huffman said that Reddit has nothing to announce about those deals, but that it is in "active discussions" and that its leadership will "do what makes sense and is in the best interest for Reddit strategically and economically."
Although it reported 53% year-over-year revenue growth in its 2026 third-quarter results, as well as 16% growth in weekly active users, Reddit's share price dropped today due to a lower-than-expected forecast for the next quarter.
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