Ask HN: Why Reddit blocks all automated access but has .json for all URLs?
Reddit is aggressively blocking all automated access (see their robots.txt) and uses a lot of heuristics to block crawlers that do not honor it. However, at the same time all Reddit URLs can be made machine readable by adding a .json to the end. Can anyone explain what's the point of that? 3 comments on Hacker News.
Reddit is aggressively blocking all automated access (see their robots.txt) and uses a lot of heuristics to block crawlers that do not honor it. However, at the same time all Reddit URLs can be made machine readable by adding a .json to the end. Can anyone explain what's the point of that?
Reddit is aggressively blocking all automated access (see their robots.txt) and uses a lot of heuristics to block crawlers that do not honor it. However, at the same time all Reddit URLs can be made machine readable by adding a .json to the end. Can anyone explain what's the point of that? 3 comments on Hacker News.
Reddit is aggressively blocking all automated access (see their robots.txt) and uses a lot of heuristics to block crawlers that do not honor it. However, at the same time all Reddit URLs can be made machine readable by adding a .json to the end. Can anyone explain what's the point of that?
Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why Reddit blocks all automated access but has .json for all URLs?
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Reviewed by Tha Kur
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May 13, 2026
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