It’s already dead for me. It used to be the only way I could access random reddit links with my VPN, now it too gives that stupid rejection page.

So, reddit was dead to me, but now it’s extra dead to me because I’m not disabling my VPN just to view some link. If friends send me a reddit link, I’ll just ask for a screenshot.

I think that it’ll be gradually killed, over a period of two years.

A few key events that I predict:

The code for the old interface will stop being maintained, with shareholders babbling something like optimisation of working hours. Engineers explicitly hired to maintain that interface will get fired, if they weren’t already.

Once some bug appears in some feature of the old interface, the feature will be simply removed, in the dirtiest way, causing even more bugs. Recursively.

Mod tools will be removed from the old interface regardless of bugs, under some bullshit claim like “think on the children!”.

Links to old.reddit will be automatically redirected towards the new interface. You can only choose the old interface in the settings. This effectively prevents people not logged into Reddit from using the old interface.

Reddit popularity drops, and alongside it the ad revenue. Shareholders are fuming, and looking for the next “bright” idea to counter the drop in ad revenue. It’ll be to rework the new interface again, so it’s filled with even more ads. They’ll see a short spike in ad revenue, justifying the move… followed by a sharp drop.

Analysis on what caused that sharp drop on ad revenue shows that the usage of the old interface actually increased. Shareholders will be fuming, and demand that the old interface should be killed. And thus shall it be.