Reddit is shutting down its RSS feeds from 13 November, and by March 2027 it will also close its public API. The company's explanation: RSS has become "a common surface for mass data collection and automated abuse". Translation - bots hoovering up content for artificial intelligence.

RSS is an old, simple format that lets a news reader collect new posts from websites in one place. People loved it in the blogging era. Google had the most popular such reader, then shut it down in 2013. In its announcement Reddit writes that RSS "has long been a beloved part of the open internet" and thanks its users. The thanks are polite, but the door is still closing.

The timing says a lot. The content users wrote for free on forums has become a profitable sideline: licences for AI companies. In the second quarter Reddit's "other revenue", outside advertising, grew 24 percent year on year to 43 million dollars. So why would it give the data away for free?

Several groups feel the blow. Moderators, who got notifications via RSS, need to switch to the Discord Relay app on the Devvit platform - and do so before 13 November. For everyone else who used RSS outside moderator teams, Reddit admits there is no replacement. When the company earlier hinted that RSS was going, many moderators warned the site would become unmanageable for them.

Closing the public API hits even wider: social media monitoring tools, researchers and AI assistants that today answer questions with Reddit content. After March they will have to sign a commercial agreement. Developers of approved apps and bots must register by 12 January 2027 - anyone who misses it loses access.

Even the classic, text-based Old Reddit is getting "protections": it will only be available to logged-in moderators and users who have used it in the past six months. Originally the talk was of 90 days, and the window was extended just as the news was coming out. The open internet on which platforms like Reddit were built is slowly being locked up, and the key is held by whoever is selling. Does the forum still belong to the people who write it?