Reddit is preparing to make its platform less open to casual visitors arriving from search engines. The company said during its third-quarter earnings call that it plans to move toward an experience centered on users who are signed in, as traffic from search declines and AI tools reshape how people find information online.
The change could help Reddit protect its data from unauthorized AI scraping and strengthen its hand in licensing deals with model providers. It may also support advertising revenue: signed-in users reveal more about their interests and activity, giving Reddit more ways to tailor ads and recommendations.
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The shift comes as the platform’s audience growth weakens, especially in the United States. Reddit reported 130.3 million daily active users worldwide in the third quarter, little changed from the previous quarter. U.S. daily active users fell to 50.7 million from 53.2 million, a 2 percent decline year over year.
Reddit said search referrals fell by more than 1 million per week on average in October. If the pattern continues, the company warned, daily active users could decline by a low double-digit percentage next quarter. A drop of 10 to 12 percent from the third-quarter total would put the audience at roughly 115 million to 117 million people per day.
The retreat in search traffic reflects a broader change across the web. AI-generated summaries increasingly answer questions without sending users to the sites that supplied the information, while conventional search results have lost some of their pull. For Reddit, which has long drawn visitors through Google, the impact is particularly visible.
So far, weaker audience growth has not stopped Reddit from improving its finances. Revenue climbed 53 percent year over year to $895 million, beating analyst expectations of about $875 million. Net income increased 74 percent to $283 million.
Advertising brought in $847 million, up 54 percent from a year earlier. Revenue outside advertising, including AI data licensing, rose 35 percent to $48 million. Average revenue per daily active user in the U.S. increased 53 percent to $13.82, while the global figure grew 36 percent to $6.87.
A logged-in audience could make those numbers stronger. People who arrive through search without accounts provide fewer signals about their preferences than signed-in members. Reddit says those signals can help personalize users’ feeds, suggest communities, and encourage people to vote, comment, and take part in discussions.
The strategy also aligns with Reddit’s new “For You” feed, which combines posts from communities a person follows with recommendations selected around their interests. The company announced the feature a day before the earnings call.
Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman acknowledged the significance of the move in a post on Reddit, saying the open internet had shaped his life but that he believed the change was right for the platform and its business.
The transition will not happen all at the same time. Reddit plans to test the approach in selected markets outside the United States during the fourth quarter, but has not set a global rollout date. The company says it will retain access to a logged-out front page and is rebuilding its incognito browsing option. Signing in, it stresses, will not require users to give up anonymity.
Huffman said the company still needs to determine which features belong behind a login and which should remain available to everyone. The answers will help define not only Reddit’s future, but also how much of the open web remains accessible to people who arrive without an account.
