ChatGPT is citing Reddit far less: reddit.com's share of ChatGPT Search citations collapsed from about 4% to about 0.5% on August 14, 2026. Daily data for ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode from July 7 to August 17.
The drop correlates with the time reddit locked down old reddit from accessing anonymously/without logging in to avoid AI scraping. Reddit themselves did this.
Even the normal Reddit site locks up after a few seconds if you’re not logged in. I’m still happy to kill time on msoutlookit while I’m at work, but follow any links to the main site and it locks you out pretty quickly. I imagine even that will be gone too soon.
I used morphe on the reddit app and it is still unusable. You cant get r/all or even easily get to te shitty popular sub. It shows me days and weeks old stuff. Completely different experience to what I want reddit for, new links.
They actually did use old reddit, as confirmed by reddit itself, as confirmed by massive drop after the change. It was simply far easier to scrape old reddit (pre-rendered instead of relying on JavaScript and dynamic content load)
You seem to have misunderstood, and the article you linked doesn’t contradict what I’ve said.
Wealthy, sophisticated LLM developers would not have been scraping old reddit. They would pay reddit for API access.
Shutting down old reddit closes the door on back yard developers, not OpenAI.
Additionally, when you run a prompt in a chatbot, it doesn’t scurry away and scrape old reddit and then formulate an answer. The scraping of content is going on while the model is being developed.
As if wealthy people pay for stuff they could have for free. Literally everybody had their copyright infringed from the training of GenAI. Authors, Journalists, Artists, Musicians, Regisseurs, the list is endless. Unless you sue, you won’t see any compensation from them. By now you should know that companies only play fair if they’re forced to, otherwise literally anything goes.
It’s quite naive to believe they would pay for API access, tbh.
The drop correlates with the time reddit locked down old reddit from accessing anonymously/without logging in to avoid AI scraping. Reddit themselves did this.
EDOT: And OpenAI also changed how the web search works; https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielalinzainescu/2026/08/20/reddit-nearly-vanishes-from-chatgpt-citations-after-openai-search-change/
It’s nothing to do with that. Reddit is blocking AI searches because it’s contract with OpenAI expired last month.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but contract has nothing to do with web searches. It was about training AIs, a data-licensing deal.
I learned more here, OpenAI themselves changed how the web search works; https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielalinzainescu/2026/08/20/reddit-nearly-vanishes-from-chatgpt-citations-after-openai-search-change/
Even the normal Reddit site locks up after a few seconds if you’re not logged in. I’m still happy to kill time on msoutlookit while I’m at work, but follow any links to the main site and it locks you out pretty quickly. I imagine even that will be gone too soon.
only on mobile
No it’s happening to me on pc
How much you wanna bet this lazy reporting from “promptwatch” is AI generated?
I used morphe on the reddit app and it is still unusable. You cant get r/all or even easily get to te shitty popular sub. It shows me days and weeks old stuff. Completely different experience to what I want reddit for, new links.
OpenAI would not have been scraping old ui?
Also most reddit content has long since been injested. No need to visit your http site anymore
They actually did use old reddit, as confirmed by reddit itself, as confirmed by massive drop after the change. It was simply far easier to scrape old reddit (pre-rendered instead of relying on JavaScript and dynamic content load)
https://www.engadget.com/2230544/old-reddit-could-be-the-next-casualty-of-reddits-war-on-ai-scraping/
You seem to have misunderstood, and the article you linked doesn’t contradict what I’ve said.
Wealthy, sophisticated LLM developers would not have been scraping old reddit. They would pay reddit for API access.
Shutting down old reddit closes the door on back yard developers, not OpenAI.
Additionally, when you run a prompt in a chatbot, it doesn’t scurry away and scrape old reddit and then formulate an answer. The scraping of content is going on while the model is being developed.
As if wealthy people pay for stuff they could have for free. Literally everybody had their copyright infringed from the training of GenAI. Authors, Journalists, Artists, Musicians, Regisseurs, the list is endless. Unless you sue, you won’t see any compensation from them. By now you should know that companies only play fair if they’re forced to, otherwise literally anything goes.
It’s quite naive to believe they would pay for API access, tbh.
And yet it did. And yet reddit mentioned shutting down API too