Reddit is shutting down RSS feeds and public API, blaming AI bots

Among a batch of updates for moderators and developers, Reddit has delivered unwelcome news for fans of the open web: it is ending support for RSS feeds. The company calls RSS a «common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse» and points to that as the reason behind the decision.

«We know RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we’re grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit,» the company said. RSS support will cease on November 13, and the public API will shut down by March 2027.

RSS — Really Simple Syndication — is a standardized web feed that lets users and applications receive site updates. It became especially popular during the blogging era as a way to subscribe to a site’s new posts through reader apps. Google once ran the most popular such service but closed it in 2013, ceding the market to Feedly and independent developers.

Data as a business

The move comes as the user-generated content piled up in Reddit’s forums has turned into a profitable side business — AI licensing deals. In the second quarter, Reddit’s «other revenue» beyond advertising grew 24% year-over-year to $43 million. No wonder the company is reluctant to give that data away for free.

For moderators who relied on RSS channels for alerts, Reddit now recommends the Discord Relay Devvit app and urges teams to migrate their workflows before November 13. Still, the company admits there is no replacement for RSS feeds used outside moderators’ own communities. Many moderators have already voiced concern that the site will become unmanageable, while ordinary users stressed that RSS was how they preferred to read Reddit.

The end of the public API

Shutting down the public API by March 2027 will affect any tools built for programmatic access to Reddit conversations — social listening products, research services, and AI assistants. Today those assistants can draw on Reddit to answer questions; afterward they will need commercial deals for the data.

Reddit is also «adding safeguards» to Old Reddit, its classic text-heavy version: access will be limited to logged-in moderators and recent users — again citing «abusive scraping and automated traffic.» In the coming months, access for logged-in users will be restricted to those who have visited Old Reddit in the last 90 days. Developers of approved third-party apps and bots were reminded to register them before January 12, 2027, or lose API access.

Source: TechCrunch