Reddit might make people log in just to read posts. That sounds exhausting.

I can't count how many times I've searched for some obscure problem, found a Reddit thread from six years ago, read three replies and closed the tab.

No account. No notifications. Just the answer I needed.

Apparently Reddit is considering making that experience harder to access without signing in, partly because AI search and scraping are changing where its traffic goes.

I get the business problem. If AI tools use the conversations while fewer people visit the site, Reddit loses something.

But requiring an account to read a random discussion feels like punishing the person who actually clicked through.

Sometimes the reason a community becomes useful is that you can stumble into it without joining.

I'd hate to lose that part of the internet.