Why Reddit blocks all automated access but has .json for all URLs?

Question

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?

downbad_ · Accepted Answer

I just want to know why Reddit keeps banning people for no good reason,while letting bots roam free.

PaulHoule · Answer

Circa 2009 or so I was interested in automated link building systems, there were some sites that had no defenses, but I saw enough going on around Reddit that I just didn't want to mess with it.