Reddit will become a "logged-in only experience," and the company plans to move fast, beginning testing soon in regions outside the US before flipping the switch globally.
The popular community website—home to a great many official and unofficial gaming message boards—lost one million search engine referrals per week on average in October, CEO Steve Huffman said on an investor call today .
The culprit, of course, was AI. A Google search that once might have led someone to a 14-year-old Reddit thread containing the answer to a rare household cleaning problem is now likely to present that answer in an AI summary, no click required.
"Google has really shifted in their relationship with the rest of the internet," Huffman said during a Q&A.
The CEO emphasized, however, that most of Reddit's revenue (over 80%) comes from logged-in and app users, and said that the company will focus on establishing the site as "a direct daily habit" that doesn't rely on search traffic.
Efforts cited in that direction include…