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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
How much you wanna bet this lazy reporting from “promptwatch” is AI generated?
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.
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