“We’re making the change because it’s better for user experience, better for our ads business, is more in line with safety regulations, and more protective of Reddit data,” he explained.

According to Huffman, Reddit has grown to the point where personalization is increasingly necessary to help users find relevant communities and discussions.

In short- we can't datamine you if you're not logged in, we can't build a behavioral profile on people without accounts, we lick the boots of governments that'll demand ID checks age verification, and it makes it harder for AI bots to scrape the site without paying us. Really there's no downside to anyone at all, it's a win-win. Oh it's bad for users and bad for the Internet? Is that important? Those groups don't pay us, right?