Any site that requires an account just to read users freely created public content should be boycotted.
Maintained for years that as soon as they disable old.reddit.com (or make it effectively disabled) I'd abandon the site and well it appears they finally crossed that rubicon.
It's a shame, reddit was pretty great at one point and it's been a slow descent ever since - another useful part of the internet (to me) dies and in part thanks to AI - seems to be a pattern that one.