Tell HN: Old Reddit now requires login

I think I'm finally done.

80 points | by jay_kyburz 22 hours ago

9 comments

  • ChrisArchitect 22 hours ago
  • Terr_ 22 hours ago
    Still work from my machine, but if it happens then that's the end of Reddit for me.

    P.S.: To be more-specific, I was already betrayed once. A power-user since ~2007, enough discussion comments to fill literal books, invites to those lame "more than X karma" subreddits... and then one morning I was secretly shadowbanned, everything I'd ever made disappeared from public view--including others' replies.

    Mystified, eventually found out what was going on and went to the appeals page. My appeal was granted... but nothing was actually repaired. No information in moderation logs, and if my post/comment was approved by moderators a mysterious force always switched it back later. Now the system claims I don't need to use the appeals page because the account is in good standing. Other routes of filing help tickets, nothing.

    Seeking help, I made another account to try some of the help subreddits.... And then that one was killed too. The injustice rankles.

    • meitham 15 hours ago
      This echoes my experience too! You write one thing that can be misinterpreted as offensive to someone somewhere and suddenly you are an enemy of the Reddit state
      • Terr_ 13 hours ago
        The thing is, I was never (admin) suspended before, and I can think of only two or three small-subreddit moderator bans in the last 10 years, the mystery-shadowban had zero communication involved, and the appeal was (at least on-paper) determined to be granted because it was a mistake...

        So I'm assuming this was some case where my ISP rotated my IP to one that was previously assigned to someone else, or vice-versa, or just accessing the site through some coffee-shop free wifi, etc.

        That said, I'm quite willing to believe it's gotten way worse since then, especially since nowadays "moderation" can be outsourced to an LLM that doesn't reliably understand context, sarcasm, or quoting the other guy's posts.

    • faangguyindia 11 hours ago
      I grew a fitness subreddit to 100,000 members from 0. A fitness sub, after sometime, reddit mod team came up with list of possible moderators, I looked at them most of them were fake accounts shilling for some supplement company.

      I was also offered money by supplement companies to promote supplements on our sub which I never accepted.

      Unfortunately, reddit mod team is of no use, they cannot really tell who is high quality contributor vs who is getting nuked by fake accounts created by competitors/supplement companies etc...

      • bjourne 9 hours ago
        Very clear that was going on in other subreddits too. E.g., moderators in r/worldnews conspiring to promote certain views while suppressing others.
        • jayGlow 2 hours ago
          there's a cabal of power mods that control a large number of the most popular subreddits it's definitely used to push certain views on Reddit.
    • krkrdlfktm 19 hours ago
      [dead]
  • hightrix 18 hours ago
    Just opened https://old.reddit.com/ in private Firefox on Windows and did not get a login wall. Able to click into comments and view links.

    What platform are you using?

  • penpendian 1 hour ago
    maybe reddit is done when moderator can be applied by AI bots?
  • taurath 10 hours ago
    At the same time that they launched a for you recommended feed and set it as the default on the new one.

    Reddit built its house out of Digg doing stuff like this - it’ll be interesting to see if someone else comes and just provides a service that cares about its users again.

  • mhitza 17 hours ago
    Maybe you've started using a VPN recently? Only time I'm login blocked.

    Over Tor you can still access it without much fuss https://old.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqn...

  • RGamma 11 hours ago
    Can't reproduce.
  • blaqq2 22 hours ago
    Yeah, welcome to the new age of advertising