Load more comments is currently broken on old reddit (likely related to the new longer comment ids)

[u/baseballlover723]

On old reddit, anytime the post doesn't natively load all the comments, it gives you a button like "load more comments (5 replies)" to load the additional comments. It also always shows up on stickied mod comments, as all replies to stickied mod comments are hidden by default.

This has been broken for about a day now. This obviously impedes old reddit mod's ability to moderate effectively, since it becomes incredibly inconvenient to actually see all the comments in a post.

This has been reported twice on r/bugs yesterday with no acknowledgement (not even https://www.redditstatus.com/), so I'm quite concerned that reddit is not aware of this critical issue to the base functionality of old reddit. Looking at the request it sends, it's getting back a 403 (Unauthorized) error code (and also tells you you're network blocked, which is the default reddit response to a 403 and is also completely incorrect in this and many other instances). It should be noted that this functionality currently works on shreddit (which uses the newer, private graphql instead of the public API).

Given the timing, I highly suspect that the cause is the recent update to comment ids. Though how it gets to a 403 is rather baffling to me, considering that it's extremely unlikely to actually be an auth issue, given the fact that the rest of the public API endpoints don't have this issue.

[u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Hi u/baseballlover723 Thanks for flagging this. I’ve shared this with the team working on this to take a look

[u/Slow-Maximum-101 → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Hi u/baseballlover723 Are you still having this issue? We've tested across a few spots and it seems to be working now

[u/baseballlover723 → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Hey, I just tested it and it worked as it normally did! Thanks for the fix!

[u/tumultuousness → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

I'm not OP, but this is still happening to me.

From some other comments I saw, I tried using old.reddit.com specifically and there "load more comments" works. But my preference of old reddit on www.reddit.com just has the "loading" stay up indefinitely when clicking "load more comments".

[u/omers → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Still happening here as well. If you are on www.reddit.com with the preference set for old reddit it doesn't work. If you are actually on old.reddit.com it works fine. It's some sort of referral/cross-site issue.

On www.reddit.com you get a 403 almost immediately on the morechildren request initiated by reddit-init.en.Jre8Hvy5gDE.js

[u/robodrew → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Same thing as what u/tumultuousness said, it is still stuck on "loading..." for me, specifically through www.reddit.com with "Load New Reddit as the Default Experience" checked off.

edit: it's now fixed!!!

[u/Tappedout0324 → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Issue persists if the url is “www.reddit.com” but seems to work when it’s “old.reddit.com.

For users who have preference set to old Reddit, it’s annoying you manual have to add the “old” prefix to the url

[u/Abbx → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Still happening on my end. As other users said, the link needs to specifically be old.reddit.com for it to load them. If your link is reddit.com it still does not.

[u/spiteful_rr_dm_TA]

Yeah not a surprise. They've been trying to kill old reddit for a long, long time. They want people swapping over to the new version. I'm sure more and more features will "mysteriously break" until old reddit is unusable.

[u/Insulting_Insults]

oh is that what's been happening? i was fuckin' wondering why comments weren't loading. happened like halfway down a thread i was still in the middle of reading

do you think, knowing what we know with them locking Old Reddit to login only (and soon only to users who have logged into Old Reddit in the past 6 months), that they'll use this new glitch as an excuse to finally kill Old Reddit?

edit: removed long and honestly unnecessary rant as it's only tangentially related to this thread LOL

[u/Extolord111 → u/Insulting_Insults]

Honestly I would've loved the rant.

Every time the admins talk about their recent changes (access to Old Reddit, RSS Feeds, API access, etc.) and put it under the guise of "reducing automated traffic and scraping" it just feels like a thinly veiled hatred for the things that made Reddit fun to use for the past several years.

I hated the early-2025 Reddit era for taking away the New Reddit UI (they failed at that by the way), but everything that's happened in the past year is making me yearn for those times again.

[u/new2bay → u/Insulting_Insults]

edit: removed long and honestly unnecessary rant as it's only tangentially related to this thread LOL

Let me guess: it started with "I wonder what they're going to end up breaking while fixing this," and ended with "this is how old Reddit dies." Because that's what I was thinking.

[u/Insulting_Insults → u/new2bay]

som like that LOL

[u/4rastapasta2]

A lot of old reddit is broken.

[u/garyp714]

Reddit killing old reddit is them trying to help me stop doom scrolling. Well that and stop modding my subs but, whatev...

[u/-Captain-]

This shit isn't gonna get fixed, is it?

The new message pop up has never been fixed either.

[u/2oonhed]

I had that yesterday. The work around is open the last live "permalink" in a new tab and the children comments will appear under it.