Reddit will keep old Reddit online ‘as long as people are using it,’ says CEO

The aged Reddit layout sometimes looks a spot outdated, but it’s beloved by galore Reddit users, including me. I’ve disquieted for immoderate clip that Reddit would yet propulsion the plug connected it successful favour of the newer and much modern interface, but based connected a caller station from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, it doesn’t dependable similar that’s going to hap anytime soon.

As portion of a larger post published Monday astir “Reddit’s adjacent chapter,” which we saw via TechCrunch, Huffman, who goes by the username spez, snuck successful what looked similar heart-stopping quality for america oldheads close astatine the end.

“Sunsetting old.reddit: old.reddit is the mentation of Reddit that we built backmost successful the mid-2000s,“ Huffman said. ”It doesn’t scale, it’s intolerable to make on, and it’s disfigured af. We volition beryllium shutting it down astatine the extremity of the month.”

But, apparently, that was conscionable a joke. (A bold move, fixed outcry to other Reddit-related shutdowns.) “Just kidding,” helium said. “I don’t cognize wherefore I accidental worldly similar this. We’ll fig retired however to enactment astir it and support it online arsenic agelong arsenic radical are utilizing it.”

The station covers galore different existent planned changes to the platform, including that “core merchandise improvements” similar making it easier to marque subreddits and “evolving r/popular” are successful the works. Reddit besides wants to displacement the superior relation of moderators from “policing to assemblage cultivation,” successful portion with “better tools – particularly much AI-driven automation,” helium said.

Huffman acknowledged that “unwelcome AI successful communities is simply a superior concern” and that it’s the interest helium hears astir from users and mods. But helium believes that “Reddit works due to the fact that it’s human” and said that “our absorption is, and ever volition be, connected keeping Reddit a trusted spot for quality conversation.”

Reddit is going to inquire for a spot much identifying accusation from its users, too. Here’s Huffman’s statement of what volition happen:

To support Reddit quality and to conscionable evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to request a small much information. Specifically, we volition request to cognize whether you are a human, and successful immoderate locations, if you are an adult. But we ne'er privation to cognize your sanction oregon who you are. The mode we volition bash this is by moving with assorted third-party services that tin supply america with the indispensable accusation and thing else. No solution is cleanable — including the presumption quo — but we volition bash our champion to sphere some the humanness and anonymity of Reddit. 

On Wednesday, Reddit besides shared details astir improvements it’s making to Reddit Chat, including the quality to adhd users to an allowlist. The institution announced in March that it would beryllium replacing idiosyncratic PMs with Chat.