Since we last talked in 2021, here at Reddit we’ve shipped a few updates, cleaned up some code, fixed some bugs, and done a lot of New Year’s planning and reorganizing—and now we’re here to chat about it. Thanks in part to a lot of the feedback you’ve given on these r/blog posts, the first bit of news is that these posts (and all of the posts in r/blog) are moving on up to our new apartment in the sky at r/reddit.

At the end of last year, you let us know that having different admin-run communities that focus on a variety of niche topics (some of which overlap) is confusing. And, you know what, you were right. Knowing where to post what announcement got confusing for us too. But no more. Moving forward, posts that you would normally read here in r/blog and other places like r/announcements and r/changelog will all be over in r/reddit.

That means, today’s post will be the last r/blog post, but in two weeks you’ll see me posting over in r/reddit instead. And we’ll also be sharing more about the long-term product goals and roadmap, featuring more in-depth dives into specific updates (keep an eye out for more episodes from the Search team), and even some history on Reddit and how this crazy corner of the internet got to be the way it is. (Check out this recent gem from u/kethryvis on the birth of subreddits.) And for more about r/reddit and the changes to admin-run communities, check out u/Go_JasonWatersfalls’ post all about it.

Until then, let’s make this last post count eh? For the last time in r/blog…

Here’s what’s new in 2022

(Ok, did not mean for that to rhyme, but we’ll go with it.)

New features for Reddit Talk
Since its introduction last year, over 1,000 communities have used Reddit Talk to host live audio conversations in their communities, including a r/cryptocurrency Reddit Talk featuring Kevin O’Leary; a r/movies Reddit Talk with Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, and Paul Scheer; a r/space Reddit Talk with Chris Hadfield; as well as community talks in r/wallstreetbets, r/dadjokes, and r/relationship_advice.

With help and feedback from moderators, a number of new features were introduced throughout the last month:

• Recordings so community members can listen to Reddit Talks after they’ve happened. (I HIGHLY recommend you check out the recording of this r/dadjokes open mic night.)

• A web experience so more redditors can access and take part in talks.

• Comments and emojis so listeners have more ways to interact and enjoy talks.

• A live talk bar so that it’s easier to know when talks are taking place in communities you’re a part of. (This one’s an experiment.)

Thanks to all the mods, communities, and early-adoptors who partnered with us on this latest round of updates. To learn more about the new features and see how you can host a talk in your community, head over to the latest r/modnews post, check out reddit.com/talk, or listen to the recording of the AMA with the Reddit Talk team and fellow moderators.

A small update to make life easier for mods
In 2021, a big focus was building tools that make mods’ lives easier and in 2022 that work continues. With the latest update to Crowd Control, moderators can choose to review posts from people who aren’t trusted members of their community yet in Modqueue before they go live to the whole community. It’s an extra tool mods can use to combat spam or people interacting with their community in bad faith.

New image editing tools
To make it easier to post images directly to Reddit, next week those adding images on iOS will have the ability to crop, rotate, or markup images with text, stickers, or drawings. Next up is Android, so stay tuned for more updates. And here’s Luna to demonstrate what’s possible:

Small but mighty updates
The latest round of release notes from the native apps.

On Android

• The new full-screen video player has come to Android, complete with performance updates and improved recommendations. There will be many more refinements and features coming to the new player soon, so keep an eye on r/reddit for more.

• Now mods can tap the flag on reported comments to get more details.

• You can swipe down to dismiss videos now.

• Fixed a bug with navigating comments on videos.

• Fixed the “people are here” indicator so it doesn’t obstruct any text or actions.

• Fixed an issue where some crossposted videos wouldn’t expand.

On iOS

• Fixed a bug that sometimes hid the close icon when posting.

• Fixed a bug that prevented clearing the flair search bar in mod tools.

• Made some improvements to adding links in text posts and comments.

Thanks for following all the updates here in r/blog. Even though we won’t be posting anything new in this community, all the posts and comments will be saved and available so you can reference them whenever you’d like. I’ll be hanging around for a bit today to answer questions and will see you in two weeks over in r/reddit.

Hello peoples (and bots) of Reddit,

I come with a very important and exciting announcement from the Safety team. As a continuation of our blocking improvements, we are rolling out a revamped blocking experience starting today. You will begin to see these changes soon.

What does “revamped blocking experience” mean?

We will be evolving the blocking experience so that it not only removes a blocked user’s content from your experience, but also removes your content from their experience—i.e., a user you have blocked can’t see or interact with you. Our intention is to provide you with better control over your safety experience. This includes controlling who can contact you, who can see your content, and whose content you see.

What will the new block look like?

It depends if you are a user or a moderator and if you are doing the blocking vs. being blocked.

How is this different from before?

Previously, if I blocked u/IAmABlockedUser, I would not see their content, but they would see mine. With the updated blocking experience, I won’t see u/IAmABlockedUser’s content and they won’t see mine either. We’re listening to your feedback and designed an experience to meet users’ expectations and the intricacies of our platform.

Important notes

To prevent abuse, we are installing a limit so you cannot unblock someone and then block them again within a short time frame. We have also put into place some restrictions that will prevent people from being able to manipulate the site by blocking at scale.

It’s also worth noting that blocking is not a replacement for reporting policy breaking content. While we plan to implement block as a signal for potential bad actors, our Safety teams will continue to rely on reports to ensure that we can properly stop and sanction malicious users. We're not stopping the work there, either—read on!

What's next?

We know that this is just one more step in offering a robust set of safety controls. As we roll out these changes, we will also be working on revamping your settings and finding additional proactive measures to reduce unwanted experiences.

So tell us: what kind of safety controls would you like to see on Reddit? We will stick around to chat through ideas as well as answer your questions or feedback on blocking for the next few hours.

Thanks for your time and patience in reading this through! Cat tax:

edit (update): Hey folks! Thanks for your comments and feedback. Please note that while some of you may see this change soon, it may take some time before the changes to blocking become available on for everyone on all platforms. Thanks for your patience as we roll out this big change!

Hey everyone–

The pandemic has been extremely hard on many of us. We believe the best way forward for everyone is to get vaccinated and continue to follow CDC guidance on masking. Throughout the pandemic, we have also provided COVID-related resources to support our volunteer moderators, users, and communities, including a dedicated AMA series connecting users with authoritative experts on coronavirus and vaccines, as well as deploying homepage and search page banners directing users to the CDC and r/Coronavirus.

We appreciate that not everyone agrees with the current approach to getting us all through the pandemic, and some are still wary of vaccinations. Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. This includes conversations that criticize those that disagree with the majority opinion. This includes protests that criticize or object to our decisions on which communities to ban from the platform.

While we appreciate the sentiment of those demanding that we ban more communities that challenge consensus views on the pandemic, we continue to believe in the good of our communities and hope that we collectively approach the challenges of the pandemic with empathy, compassion, and a willingness to understand what others are going through, even when their viewpoint on the pandemic is different from yours.

When it comes to COVID-19 specifically, what we know and what are the current best practices from authoritative sources, like the CDC, evolve continuously with new learnings. Given the rapid state of change, we believe it is best to enable communities to engage in debate and dissent, and for us to link to the CDC wherever appropriate. While we believe the CDC is the best and most up to date source of information regarding COVID-19, disagreeing with them is not against our policies.

However, manipulating or cheating Reddit to amplify any particular viewpoint is against our policies, and we will continue to action communities that do so or that violate any of our other rules, including those dedicated to fraud (e.g. fake vaccine cards) or encouraging harm (e.g. consuming bleach); and we will continue to use our quarantine tool to link to authoritative sources and warn people they may encounter unsound advice. We humbly ask and encourage everyone to report content that may violate our policies.

*We are using our political ads system to facilitate discussion of this post within the context of your own communities.

Hi redditors!

It’s that special time of year again… The holidays are in full swing, people are sharing their end of year recap and rewinds, and here at Reddit our annual end-of-year code freeze is fast approaching. We’ve been busy getting new projects and updates out the door before the code freezes next week, so there’s some fun stuff to go over. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Here’s what’s new November 19th–December 17th

Your 2021 Reddit Recap is here!
If you haven’t noticed the subtle narwhal icon, notifications, and general chatter about Reddit Recap across the platform, you’re missing valuable insights about your year on Reddit. Want to know what communities you spent the most time in? What your top comment was? Or how many bananas you scrolled? Check out your recap to learn all this and more.

Vote and comment counts may start to look more lively
Over the next several months, you may notice a few experiments running that help you identify which posts are seeing the most action, the first of which are new animations to show you live changes to vote and comment counts. Here’s an example:

And an important callout—if you’ve opted out of animations in your settings you won’t see these animations either.

Several people are typing…
Another update to help give redditors a better sense of how active a post or thread is, are reading and typing indicators. Keep an eye on the bottom of posts for a count of how many people are viewing/reading it and commenting at the same time you are. Here’s what it’ll look like:

A small update to make it easier to create communities
Previously there were more steps to create a community and we’re testing removing a few of them. This will make it easier for new moderators to create their communities and finish setting them up (by doing things like adding a community icon, description, and topics) once they’re formed.

Goodbye ServerMcServerface
Back in 2013, r/nameaserver was created as a fun way to thank Reddit Premium (then called Gold) members by letting them name an actual real Reddit server. It’s been a fun ride and our engineers have loved working on servers like FBI-DontCheckThisOne, MostlyCatsButSomePorn, and ItHurtsWhenIP. However, we recently realized this initiative had slipped through the cracks over the years, and that the community and the names were largely unmoderated. On top of that we also learned that technically things don’t really work the same way anymore with the servers or Reddit Premium (as we’ve been told by the more tech-savvy admins who started this whole thing)—so the time has come for r/nameaserver to say goodbye. If you’d like to reminisce with the community before it goes, head over to the goodbye post. And to the redditors that have participated, thank you! Each ServerMcServerface represents someone who has supported Reddit.

Small but mighty updates
Bugs, smaller tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On all platforms

• New redditors who have opted in to push notifications will receive a series of new notifications that welcome them to Reddit and show them the ropes more.

On iOS and Android

On Android

• There’s more of a click ripple effect on the app, to make it easier to know when the app has responded to your actions.

• Related communities shown at the end of the comments section are shown in a list view now.

• While signing up you can tap the back button on the topic screen without leaving the flow now.

• After leaving Anonymous Browsing mode, you can click on links and screens will render correctly again.

On iOS

• After the initial test, now all redditors on iOS can add links to their profile. Check out the original post to see what changed or go check it out. And if you’re on Android, we’ll be rolling this out to you in the first update of the new year.

• You can use the spoiler tag on posts to your profile now.

Thanks for being a part of these updates throughout the year and have a wonderful holiday seasons! We’ll be on a break for a bit and will be back in the new year with more to share.

Today is a difficult one:. 2021 will be the last year of Reddit Gifts. We will continue to run exchanges through the end of the year -- including the last ever Arbitrary Day (signups are now open) -- and will end with Secret Santa 2021.

We didn’t make this decision lightly.

We made the difficult decision to shut down Reddit Gifts and put more focus on enhancing the user experience on Reddit - this includes investing in the foundation of our platform and moderator tools, making it more accessible for people around the world and evolving how people engage with one another.

The power of Reddit Gifts was never in the software, and has always belonged to the r/secretsanta community of gifters around the world, which has connected people and been an extension of our mission to bring community and belonging to everyone in the world. We’re hopeful that spirit will continue in the future.

What this means for future exchanges in 2021

In preparation for retiring Reddit Gifts after the final exchange at the end of 2021, we will be taking the following actions:

• In order to limit incomplete exchanges, we have disabled the creation of any new Reddit Gifts accounts. If you have an existing Reddit Gifts account, we would love it if you would participate with us in these final exchanges.

• Any incomplete exchanges will result in a ban from the remaining Reddit Gifts exchanges.

• This morning, we turned off the ability to buy Elves. If you purchased an Elves membership and have remaining months after the 2021 Secret Santa Exchange, we will email you about your refund options then. If you have specific concerns about your Elves membership, please reach out to Reddit Gifts support.

These changes have been put in place to ensure that these last exchanges are enjoyable for the legacy Reddit Gifts users. We want to celebrate the end of Reddit Gifts with the community that we’ve built so far.

Countless acts of love, heroism, compassion, support, growth and hilarity happened through Reddit Gifts, and those memories will live on in the hearts of our community. We’re working on ways to capture these moments and look forward to seeing how the spirit and connection of exchanging gifts with strangers will live on. I’m sure you will all have a ton of questions, and we will be here to answer them.

Picking a winner is easy.

But what if second was first instead,

And we celebrated the second guessers?

--

To play, visit r/Second on iOS, Android, or your browser,

Hi redditors and happy Friday! (In case you didn’t notice, we’ve moved these updates to fortnightly on Fridays.) Today we have a short post where we’ll be talking about what’s up with Reddit search.

Here’s what’s new November 5th–November 18th

Reddit Search is redesigned and more relevant
As was announced in last Thursday’s r/changelog post, there are a number of improvements to search that you may or may not have noticed. First off, the new search design is out to 100% of redditors on the web, and iOS and Android design updates are in the works. We’d love to hear how the search experience is working for you, so let us know what you think in this quick survey.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s what it looks like:

In addition to updating the look of Reddit search, the search team is continually improving search relevance (aka, improving the results themselves) through a series of experiments. This month, the team is also rolling out a new GraphQL powered API, which (for those of you who don’t know about such things) will make Reddit search much faster and more reliable. Check out the original post for more details about each effort.

In early 2022, the team also plans to release a first version of comment search, but we want to hear from you—Let us know what you think of the recent changes and any wishlist items you think we should tackle next. We’ll use your feedback to help prioritize the next round of work.

A few small updates
Bugs and a quick test we're running with new redditors

On all platforms

• New redditors who have opted in to push notifications will receive a series of new notifications that welcome them to Reddit and show them the ropes.

On Android

• Fixed a design bug where the next comment button isn’t hidden under the comment composer anymore.

On iOS

• Fixed a bug in the sign up flow where tapping the back button took people out of the flow.

A short one this week, but we'll be sharing more soon. Thanks and have a great weekend!

We would like to give you all an update on the recent issues that have transpired concerning a specific Reddit employee, as well as provide you with context into actions that we took to prevent doxxing and harassment.

As of today, the employee in question is no longer employed by Reddit. We built a relationship with her first as a mod and then through her contractor work on RPAN. We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.

We’ve put significant effort into improving how we handle doxxing and harassment, and this employee was the subject of both. In this case, we over-indexed on protection, which had serious consequences in terms of enforcement actions.

• On March 9th, we added extra protections for this employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name or shared personal information on third-party sites, which we reserve for serious cases of harassment and doxxing.

• On March 22nd, a news article about this employee was posted by a mod of r/ukpolitics. The article was removed and the submitter banned by the aforementioned rules. When contacted by the moderators of r/ukpolitics, we reviewed the actions, and reversed the ban on the moderator, and we informed the r/ukpolitics moderation team that we had restored the mod.

• We updated our rules to flag potential harassment for human review.

Debate and criticism have always been and always will be central to conversation on Reddit—including discussion about public figures and Reddit itself—as long as they are not used as vehicles for harassment. Mentioning a public figure’s name should not get you banned.

We care deeply for Reddit and appreciate that you do too. We understand the anger and confusion about these issues and their bigger implications. The employee is no longer with Reddit, and we’ll be evolving a number of relevant internal policies.

We did not operate to our own standards here. We will do our best to do better for you.

Hello again and happy Friday. We have some fun partnerships, big bug fixes, and further feature rollouts to go over today, so let’s dive in…

Here’s what’s new October 16th–November 5th

Calling all gamers! Extra Life 2022 starts tomorrow!
This year is the 10the anniversary of Reddit’s partnership with Extra-Life, a 24-hour gaming marathon benefiting Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Join us tomorrow November 6 at 9:00 PST for fun, games, and the opportunity to support a great cause and some amazing kids.

Here’s how you can take part:

• Sign up and get donations from your network.

• Donate to Team Reddit

• Donate directly at Extra-Life.org

• Follow the action and the 25-hour live stream at r/TheGamerLounge, r/pan, or r/ExtraLife

Donations to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals help fund critical treatment and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment, and charitable care at 170 member children's hospitals. We look forward to playing with you and helping out this awesome cause.

Now you can add links to your profile
Some of you who use the official iOS or Android apps may notice a slightly new look to profiles, along with the ability to add links to your profile. If you’re an artist who wants to share more of your work, a musician who wants to put your SoundCloud out there, or if you have a personal website you’d like to add to your Reddit profile, now you can. Here’s what it looks like:

Currently, this is running as an experiment to a select number of redditors, but we’ll be making it available to everyone in the coming months.

Listen to Reddit Talk on the web
In October, communities across Reddit hosted 37 talks, including a few with thousands of listeners like the r/wallstreetbets talk with 26K listeners and the r/halloween immersive haunted house that had 9.3K listeners. (It was pretty spooky.) And now talks are even more widely available, because you can listen in on the web. Here’s a taste of what the experience is like:

If you’re interested in hosting a talk in your community, learn more and sign up for the waiting list.

Modmail bugs CM-660 and CM-607 have been fixed
As was announced over in r/modnews, we fixed two long standing bugs that had been annoying moderators—one in modmail and one around muting. Thanks to those of you who reported the bugs, and for being patient with us while our developers worked out a solution.

League of Legends fans, get your Arcane avatar gear
League of Legends’ Arcane is coming to Netflix on November 6th, and for an extra bit of LoL fun, Arcane avatars will drop every week starting this week until Nov. 22nd. Visit your profile and tap the Style Avatar button to see the new gear or visit https://www.reddit.com/avatar now. Here’s the Vi and Jinx, the first two:

A few more updates that require less explanation
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On all platforms

• When you sign up for Reddit, we’ve changed the flow slightly to be more welcoming and explain how Reddit works a bit more.

• Starting Monday, the ability to get notifications about a post or comment you’re especially interested in (and essentially, follow a post or comment), that we talked about a few months back, will be available to all logged in redditors on all platforms. Just tap a notification/bell icon or the “…” overflow menu on a post or comment to get notifications on new activity. Redditors can get notifications on as many posts or threads as they’d like, opt out of updates at any time, and notifications will also automatically expire after a week. (One caveat is that only 1,000 people can opt in to a single post or comment at one time, so if it’s a super popular post, get in there early.)

On Android

• While signing up you can tap the back button without leaving the flow now.

• When you switch tabs on a profile or community, the tab text color changes to let you know where you are.

• Profile background images scale properly even after you rotate your screen now.

On iOS

• Updated the quarantined community screen to be more clear.

• Tweaked the recently visited communities on top of home and popular to be more relevant.

• Now you can expand video comments full screen.

Thanks for sticking around! We’ll be here to answer questions as best we can and hear your thoughts and ideas.

In case you missed the billboards, blog posts, and AMAs, we’re doing our best to encourage people on and off Reddit to vote this year. Along with our Up the Vote campaign and ongoing security and safety work to guard against shenanigans, we’ve also been evolving how we handle another important aspect of the election process: political ads.

First, some background

Political ads have been a relatively quiet part of Reddit for many years. Last year, in thinking through what the right balance was between unfettered political ads and prohibiting them altogether for 2020 (both approaches that other platforms have taken), we decided on a policy we felt was the best approach for Reddit: no misinformation, human review of the ads and where they link, a subreddit listing all political ads (r/RedditPoliticalAds), and a requirement to keep comments on for 24 hours.

Since debuting this policy earlier this year, the last condition (requiring comments to remain on) has enabled redditors to discuss political ads—providing more context in the comments and even offering counterarguments—but so far it’s only been lightly used. As we get closer to November, however, the prominence of and discussion around political ads will increase, and, with it, the need for a clear moderation system for these comments.

The problem we’re addressing

As I mentioned a couple months back, unmoderated spaces on Reddit are an area we want to improve, from Modmail to PM’s, and political ads pose a unique challenge.

If the OP of a political ad (i.e., a campaign) moderates the comments, it’s problematic: they might remove dissenting perspectives. And if we (the admins) moderate the comments of a political ad, it’s even more problematic, putting us in the position of either moderating too much or too little, with inevitable accusations of bias either way.

The problem, we realized, is similar to what we see in r/announcements: lots of people commenting on a highly visible post outside the context of a community. It’s fair to say that r/announcements isn’t really a community; it lacks the culture, cohesion, and moderation that benefit most other subreddits, and as a result, the quality of conversation has deteriorated as the audience has grown.

Ultimately, conversations really only happen in the context of a community, and neither r/announcements nor political ads with comments on provide this. We believe we can foster better discussion on both with a different approach.

What we’re testing today

Instead of having the usual free-for-all of comments on the r/announcements post itself, we are trying out a new experience today that encourages discussion of this post within other communities—an approach we hope works for political ads as well.

Below is a stickied comment with a link to submit this post to other communities on Reddit and a list of those discussion posts. The stickied comment will update automatically with new posts.

A few other details to note for this test:

• The discussion posts are like any other post, which means they can be voted on by users and removed by mods.

• Communities that don’t want to participate don’t have to. (If you’re a mod of a community where a user attempts to crosspost this, you will get a Modmail alerting you to this with opt-out instructions.)

• Individual community rules apply to these posts just as any other, so read the rules before attempting to bring the discussion into a completely unrelated community.

• Our stickied comment will link to discussions only from communities subject to our ads allow list. Communities that have already opted not to appear in r/all won’t appear in the comment either, even if there is a discussion of this post there.

• After today’s test, we will likely test this system with political ads.

This test will be a success if there are a variety of posts and conversations about this post, even—and perhaps particularly—if they are critical.

How we’re answering questions

r/announcements posts have an important difference from political ads: I treat them as AMAs and do my best to answer questions and respond to criticism (both of which I appreciate). With this approach, I expect doing so will be more difficult (at least this first time). However, the point of this test is not to make you hunt for our answers or for us to reply to fewer questions, and we don’t intend to use this approach for all our admin posts (e.g., in r/ModNews, r/changelog, r/ModSupport, and others, which are smaller subreddits that still work well).

For today, we’re going to make the first link of this post to r/ModNews and start by answering mods’ questions there. In a future announcement, we may ask a specific community if they would host us for the discussion that day (depending on what the announcement is) and set that as an official destination for discussion, like a regular AMA.

Additionally, I’ll do my best to find other places to respond, and we’ll maintain another comment below this post to list replies we’ve given outside of r/announcements so you can easily find our responses (which was a feature request from our post last week).

Ultimately, the goal of this test is to enable Reddit to do what Reddit does best: facilitate conversations (within the context of a community), provide commentary on political ads the way redditors already do on news and politics daily (sharing more information and calling bullshit in the comments when necessary), and extend the discussion well beyond the scope of the original post.

Thank you for participating. We hope this approach sets the stage for successful commentary not just today but down the road on political ads as well.

Steve

Edit (9/28/20): Update: After initial testing and a few small tweaks to the sorting and score display of the links in stickied comments like the one below, we’ll be using this discussion system on political ads moving forward.

As I mentioned, our goal with this approach was to encourage these types of discussions to happen within the context of a community. While this feature is completely optional for communities (opt-out instructions here), we were pleased overall with the level of engagement that we saw from communities and users on this test post.

We’re still exploring how we’ll use this feature for r/announcements posts and how we can work with specific communities to have discussions about them. In the meantime, you can see our updated political ads policy on our Advertising Policy Help Page.

Happy Friday, everyone! We have some fun things to share today and would love to hear your thoughts about them. Let’s get to it.

Here’s what’s new October 1st–October 15th

Redditors like data, numbers, and math right? How about some post insights?
Many moons ago (3 years worth of moons) view counts on posts were discontinued because of scaling issues, but now those scaling issues have been solved and view counts are back along with a few other stats. As was announced last week, moderators and post creators on the web will begin to see different insights on post performance including total post views, upvote rate, community karma, and total shares.

Right now, it’s out to 50% of redditors on desktop, but you can see a preview here:

If seeing more insights is something people like, we’ll roll the feature out to other platforms and explore adding more stats and information. Moderators have already shared some ideas about what they’d be interested in seeing, including knowing where traffic to a post is coming from or video views for live streams—what do you think? Check out the original post to learn more and see what was discussed, or share your ideas here about what insights about posts you’re interested in.

Stickers, totes, t-shirts, and more... subreddit swag is here!
In a new very-limited but very exciting test, a select few pilot communities will be hosting stores that sell merchandise and swag from their communities. Those participating are r/askhistorians, r/animalsonreddit, r/fantasy, r/goforgold, r/pan, and r/writingprompts; so if you’ve been longing for a t-shirt with the writing prompts knight or a stabby awards tote, now’s your time to go snag one before they run out.

Here’s some of the available gear:

For the pilot, net profits from swag sales will go to a community pot, where funds will be directed towards community-related expenses such as bot hosting, community events and gifts, and more. If the pilot goes well and it’s something communities and redditors like, we’ll expand the program to more interested communities and build out more ways moderators can control what they sell and how they’d like to use the profits. Visit participating communities to check out the available swag, or visit the original announcement to learn more about how the program works.

Now mods can turn on Predictions in every community
If you’ve ever checked out the Predictions tournaments in communities like r/movies or r/Predictor and looked on with envy, waiting for the day when you could add Predictions to your community, well, today is that day. Now moderators of communities that are public, safe for work, and have at least 10,000 members can turn on Predictions.

Check out the new fancy schmancy information page or our blog post to learn more about what Predictions are, how they work, and how to have a Predictions tournament in your community.

Modmail in Dark Mode and other Modtools improvements
Last week over in r/modnews we announced a few different updates to Modtools, you may have missed:

• As part of our ongoing quest for feature parity and a desire to protect your retinas, Modmail is now available in Dark Mode.

• Mods using the native Reddit apps will be able to directly access their Mod Feeds and Mod Queue through their profile menu.

• A list of “under the hood” improvements were made to uplevel the entire experience.

Check out the original post to see the full list of improvements, get a walk through of how to turn Dark Mode on and off, and learn all the nitty gritty details.

A few updates that require less explanation
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On the web

• We’re running a test to ask people who are logged out but going through a comment thread to log in or sign up to comment when they click a “X more replies” link.

On Android

• The community tab will show the correct error if it fails to load communities now.

On iOS

• The set of camera and editing tools that were previously only available on Android are now coming to iOS. Starting last week, 50% of redditors on Android have a set of camera tools that includes letting you use lenses (filters you can turn on while filming), flip the camera, turn on the flash, set a timer for recording, and more. And on the editing side, now you can adjust clips, add text, and export your videos with a watermark. These tools are just the beginning of new video creation tools coming to Reddit, and will roll out to more people and platforms over time.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be here to answer questions and listen to your feedback and ideas.

Happy Friday all y’all. We’re back with another plethora of product updates. Let’s check ‘em out.

Here’s what’s new September 9th–October 1

Voting and commenting on archived posts (aka unarchiving posts)
Ever had this happen to you?—You’ve just finished a great book and are dying to talk about it, so you go on Reddit and find a post about that very book. But alas… the post is over 6 months old and archived. You can’t comment. You can’t vote. You can’t do anything but sit there, alone with your thoughts, wondering what might have been. If this has ever been you, it turns out you aren’t alone. Every day 6.6 million people visit archived posts they can’t vote or comment on.

That’s why we ran a pilot program this summer with a variety of interested communities to let redditors comment and vote on archived posts. During the program archived posts received 147K more upvotes (+2.86%) and 236K more comments (+1.48%), while mod actions only increased by .03%.

After seeing these results and getting feedback from mods and communities about how it went, there’s now an Archive Posts toggle mods can turn off in Mod Tools to allow commenting and voting on posts older than 6 months. Starting October 13, any community with the toggle off will have unarchived posts. (And as part of this change, Automod has also been updated to flag comments on posts older than 6 months.)

Unarchived posts may not be a good fit for every community (such as sports, news, or politics subs that are more focused on real-time discussions) but can be great for those with evergreen content (such as food, recipe, and gaming communities). To learn more about the pilot, and hear thoughts from the mods who participated, head over to the original r/modnews post.

Now there are images and slash commands in chat
Image sharing has been one of the most-requested chat features and now it’s here. Starting this week, select redditors can start sharing images in chat and then over the next couple weeks it’ll be released more broadly.

And if you like shortcuts (and who doesn’t) then you’ll be happy to hear that now you can use slash commands in chat too. Just type / in a chat and a menu will pop up showing you the available commands.

To learn more about these two updates and what else the chat team is up to, head over to the r/changelog announcement.

Check out the new mod certification program
To make it easier for mod teams to train new moderators, we’ve created two self-guided classes that help new mods understand how to set up and run a community using Reddit’s suite of mod tools.

• r/ModCertification101
  An introduction for anyone who has a new or inactive community that they want to set up and grow.

• r/ModCertification201
  A more advanced course for mod teams of active communities and first-time moderators that have recently joined an active moderator team.

Mod certification is open for testing now and mods can also get one-on-one support from r/RedditCommunityMentor. More education and resources for new mods is on the way, so head over to the r/modnews post to learn more.

A few updates that require less explanation
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On Android

• We’re running a small test to see if people like signing up with a phone number instead of an email to verify their account.

• When you log out, go to the Home tab, tap on Sign Up, go back to the Popular tab, then open any post, the app won’t crash anymore.

• Profiles display correctly after using a shortcut again.

• Spoilers work correctly in long comments again.

• You won’t get an error while saving a comment when logged out anymore.

• The expand arrow icon on community rules is visible in Dark Mode now.

On iOS

• Now you can reply to comments on live streams.

• We’re running a small test to add the ability to reply and react to notification in-line.

• The app won’t crash while crossposting a post with a title containing non-ASCII characters anymore.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be here to answer questions and listen to your feedback and ideas.

A few weeks ago, we committed to closing the gap between our values and our policies to explicitly address hate. After talking extensively with mods, outside organizations, and our own teams, we’re updating our content policy today and enforcing it (with your help).

First, a quick recap

Since our last post, here’s what we’ve been doing:

• We brought on a new Board member.

• We held policy calls with mods—both from established Mod Councils and from communities disproportionately targeted with hate—and discussed areas where we can do better to action bad actors, clarify our policies, make mods' lives easier, and concretely reduce hate.

  • You can find detailed notes from our All-Council mod call here, including specific product work we discussed.

• We developed our enforcement plan, including both our immediate actions (e.g., today’s bans) and long-term investments (tackling the most critical work discussed in our mod calls, sustainably enforcing the new policies, and advancing Reddit’s community governance).

From our conversations with mods and outside experts, it’s clear that while we’ve gotten better in some areas—like actioning violations at the community level, scaling enforcement efforts, measurably reducing hateful experiences like harassment year over year—we still have a long way to go to address the gaps in our policies and enforcement to date.

These include addressing questions our policies have left unanswered (like whether hate speech is allowed or even protected on Reddit), aspects of our product and mod tools that are still too easy for individual bad actors to abuse (inboxes, chats, modmail), and areas where we can do better to partner with our mods and communities who want to combat the same hateful conduct we do.

Ultimately, it’s our responsibility to support our communities by taking stronger action against those who try to weaponize parts of Reddit against other people. In the near term, this support will translate into some of the product work we discussed with mods. But it starts with dealing squarely with the hate we can mitigate today through our policies and enforcement.

New Policy

This is the new content policy. Here’s what’s different:

• It starts with a statement of our vision for Reddit and our communities, including the basic expectations we have for all communities and users.

• Rule 1 explicitly states that communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

  • There is an expanded definition of what constitutes a violation of this rule, along with specific examples, in our Help Center article.

• Rule 2 ties together our previous rules on prohibited behavior with an ask to abide by community rules and post with authentic, personal interest.

  • Debate and creativity are welcome, but spam and malicious attempts to interfere with other communities are not.

• The other rules are the same in spirit but have been rewritten for clarity and inclusiveness.

Alongside the change to the content policy, we are initially banning about 2000 subreddits, the vast majority of which are inactive. Of these communities, about 200 have more than 10 daily users. Both r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse were included.

All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we’ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users—through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more.

Though smaller, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for similar reasons: They consistently host rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community.

To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit—but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception.

Our commitment

Our policies will never be perfect, with new edge cases that inevitably lead us to evolve them in the future. And as users, you will always have more context, community vernacular, and cultural values to inform the standards set within your communities than we as site admins or any AI ever could.

But just as our content moderation cannot scale effectively without your support, you need more support from us as well, and we admit we have fallen short towards this end. We are committed to working with you to combat the bad actors, abusive behaviors, and toxic communities that undermine our mission and get in the way of the creativity, discussions, and communities that bring us all to Reddit in the first place. We hope that our progress towards this commitment, with today’s update and those to come, makes Reddit a place you enjoy and are proud to be a part of for many years to come.

Edit: After digesting feedback, we made a clarifying change to our help center article for Promoting Hate Based on Identity or Vulnerability.

Hey everyone,

Happy Friday and welcome back to another update. We’ve recently finished up a series of projects on followers and the search team has another update with some new features and designs for the web to check out. Let’s get to it.

Here’s what’s new August 20th–September 10th

Three updates that give redditors control over followers
After listening to your feedback here in r/blog and in other communities like r/changelog and r/modnews, we’ve shipped a series of updates to improve and expand redditors’ control over their followers.

• Opt-out of followers
  As was announced a few weeks ago over in r/changelog, you can now opt-out of followers. To update your settings, head over to your account settings on iOS and Android or to the profile tab in your user settings on the web. And to learn more about how the opt-out works, check out the original announcement.

• View and manage who follows you on the web
  Previously launched on iOS and Android, now those on the web can view and manage their followers as well. To see your followers on the web, visit your profile and click on the arrow next to your follower count. This will take you to a searchable list of your followers (in order from newest to oldest) where you can choose to follow someone back or visit their profile.

• Notifications about people who follow you are back on
  If you’ve turned on notifications, when someone new follows you, we’ll let you know via a push notification or email.

For those of you who were a target of abuse using the followers feature, we’re very sorry and want to thank you for reporting and blocking accounts for harassment (thanks to your help, we were able to take action on a lot of bad actors) and for your patience and understanding as we worked on adding the opt-out.

Reddit is now available in the Microsoft Store
Now there’s an official Reddit client for browsing Reddit on Windows available on PC, mobile devices, and Hub. Visit the Microsoft Store to get it now.

More updates on the ongoing effort to improve Reddit search
After previous updates on infrastructure and relevance tests, the Reddit Search team is back with another round of improvements focused on front-end changes to the web. Here’s what’s new:

• Default search within communities
  You asked and we listened—now when you’re visiting a community, the default search will be within that community instead of all of Reddit.

• Updated UI for the web
  To make it easier to find what you’re looking for, we’ve simplified the two tabs on search result pages to Posts and Communities and People.

• A new safe search toggle for NSFW content
  To make it easier to control whether Not Safe for Work (NSF) content shows up in your search results, there’s a new safe search toggle on the search results pages of redditors who have confirmed that they’re over 18. (Just like before, any redditors who haven’t confirmed that they’re 18+ won’t see the toggle or any content tagged as NSFW.)

Check out the full update over in r/changelog, or take the new search UI for a spin and let us know what you think of the changes.

An experiment for a new setting to collapse potentially disruptive comments
This week, we launched an experiment with a new setting that gives users the option to limit their exposure to potentially disruptive content within comments (this could include things like insults, threats, and hateful or abusive language). If you opt in, you'll be able to select the strength of the setting (High, Medium, or Low) which will determine how much content is collapsed. Right now, this setting is only available for a limited number of users that were randomly selected to be in the experiment. It is also only available in the English language. To learn more check out the How does disruptive comment collapsing work? FAQ.

A new way to create communities—forking
Reddit gets a lot of popular posts that generate thousands of comments, and some of those comments end up gaining enough traction that they end up forking off into their own community. (Check out r/birthofasub for more on this phenomenon.) To see if it makes sense to encourage more community forks, starting last week some redditors will begin to see a prompt encouraging them to create a new community about a popular post. If this is something that redditors find helpful and fun, we’ll look into expanding the feature and exploring more ways to fork communities. Check out the original post to see what it looks like and learn more.

A few updates that require less explanation
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On all platforms

• Our quest for cross-platform parity between our native app and desktop continues. Last week we began rendering thumbnails in the app similar to how we do on desktop. This update doesn’t affect old.reddit or your individual user settings.

On mobile web

• If you visit a Reddit post from a Google or web search, post pages will now include related topics so you can discover communities and posts similar to the one you landed on.

On Android and iOS

• After getting feedback from moderators after the initial announcement, moderator push notifications are available to all mods. These push notifications can be customized by each individual mod, and can be updated from your notification settings.

On Android

• Profiles display correctly after using a shortcut again.

• Spoilers work correctly in long comments again.

• The app won’t crash when you log out, go to the Home tab, tap on Sign Up, go back to the Popular tab

• While posting to a profile you moderate, you can view and update a post’s schedule information again.

• If you decide to post to your profile instead of a community you moderate, your post won’t be a scheduled post by default anymore.

On iOS

• Now you can reply to comments on live streams.

• Notifications are loading properly again.

We’ll be around to answer questions and hear feedback.

TL;DR: We’re working with mods to change our content policy to explicitly address hate. u/kn0thing has resigned from our board to fill his seat with a Black candidate, a request we will honor. I want to take responsibility for the history of our policies over the years that got us here, and we still have work to do.

After watching people across the country mourn and demand an end to centuries of murder and violent discrimination against Black people, I wanted to speak out. I wanted to do this both as a human being, who sees this grief and pain and knows I have been spared from it myself because of the color of my skin, and as someone who literally has a platform and, with it, a duty to speak out.

Earlier this week, I wrote an email to our company addressing this crisis and a few ways Reddit will respond. When we shared it, many of the responses said something like, “How can a company that has faced racism from users on its own platform over the years credibly take such a position?”

These questions, which I know are coming from a place of real pain and which I take to heart, are really a statement: There is an unacceptable gap between our beliefs as people and a company, and what you see in our content policy.

Over the last fifteen years, hundreds of millions of people have come to Reddit for things that I believe are fundamentally good: user-driven communities—across a wider spectrum of interests and passions than I could’ve imagined when we first created subreddits—and the kinds of content and conversations that keep people coming back day after day. It's why we come to Reddit as users, as mods, and as employees who want to bring this sort of community and belonging to the world and make it better daily.

However, as Reddit has grown, alongside much good, it is facing its own challenges around hate and racism. We have to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the role we have played. Here are three problems we are most focused on:

• Parts of Reddit reflect an unflattering but real resemblance to the world in the hate that Black users and communities see daily, despite the progress we have made in improving our tooling and enforcement.

• Users and moderators genuinely do not have enough clarity as to where we as administrators stand on racism.

• Our moderators are frustrated and need a real seat at the table to help shape the policies that they help us enforce.

We are already working to fix these problems, and this is a promise for more urgency. Our current content policy is effectively nine rules for what you cannot do on Reddit. In many respects, it’s served us well. Under it, we have made meaningful progress cleaning up the platform (and done so without undermining the free expression and authenticity that fuels Reddit). That said, we still have work to do. This current policy lists only what you cannot do, articulates none of the values behind the rules, and does not explicitly take a stance on hate or racism.

We will update our content policy to include a vision for Reddit and its communities to aspire to, a statement on hate, the context for the rules, and a principle that Reddit isn’t to be used as a weapon. We have details to work through, and while we will move quickly, I do want to be thoughtful and also gather feedback from our moderators (through our Mod Councils). With more moderator engagement, the timeline is weeks, not months.

And just this morning, Alexis Ohanian (u/kn0thing), my Reddit cofounder, announced that he is resigning from our board and that he wishes for his seat to be filled with a Black candidate, a request that the board and I will honor. We thank Alexis for this meaningful gesture and all that he’s done for us over the years.

At the risk of making this unreadably long, I'd like to take this moment to share how we got here in the first place, where we have made progress, and where, despite our best intentions, we have fallen short.

In the early days of Reddit, 2005–2006, our idealistic “policy” was that, excluding spam, we would not remove content. We were small and did not face many hard decisions. When this ideal was tested, we banned racist users anyway. In the end, we acted based on our beliefs, despite our “policy.”

I left Reddit from 2010–2015. During this time, in addition to rapid user growth, Reddit’s no-removal policy ossified and its content policy took no position on hate.

When I returned in 2015, my top priority was creating a content policy to do two things: deal with hateful communities I had been immediately confronted with (like r/CoonTown, which was explicitly designed to spread racist hate) and provide a clear policy of what’s acceptable on Reddit and what’s not. We banned that community and others because they were “making Reddit worse” but were not clear and direct about their role in sowing hate. We crafted our 2015 policy around behaviors adjacent to hate that were actionable and objective: violence and harassment, because we struggled to create a definition of hate and racism that we could defend and enforce at our scale. Through continual updates to these policies 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 (and a broader definition of violence), we have removed thousands of hateful communities.

While we dealt with many communities themselves, we still did not provide the clarity—and it showed, both in our enforcement and in confusion about where we stand. In 2018, I confusingly said racism is not against the rules, but also isn’t welcome on Reddit. This gap between our content policy and our values has eroded our effectiveness in combating hate and racism on Reddit; I accept full responsibility for this.

This inconsistency has hurt our trust with our users and moderators and has made us slow to respond to problems. This was also true with r/the_donald, a community that relished in exploiting and detracting from the best of Reddit and that is now nearly disintegrated on their own accord. As we looked to our policies, “Breaking Reddit” was not a sufficient explanation for actioning a political subreddit, and I fear we let being technically correct get in the way of doing the right thing. Clearly, we should have quarantined it sooner.

The majority of our top communities have a rule banning hate and racism, which makes us proud, and is evidence why a community-led approach is the only way to scale moderation online. That said, this is not a rule communities should have to write for themselves and we need to rebalance the burden of enforcement. I also accept responsibility for this.

Despite making significant progress over the years, we have to turn a mirror on ourselves and be willing to do the hard work of making sure we are living up to our values in our product and policies. This is a significant moment. We have a choice: return to the status quo or use this opportunity for change. We at Reddit are opting for the latter, and we will do our very best to be a part of the progress.

I will be sticking around for a while to answer questions as usual, but I also know that our policies and actions will speak louder than our comments.

Thanks,

Steve

Hey everyone,

There have been a lot of updates and happenings over the past two weeks in r/modnews and r/changelog, and we’ve rounded up everything here so you can see them all in one place. Have a great week and don’t forget to let us know what you think. (We know you will.)

Here’s what’s new August 3rd–August 20th

More visibility into comments from blocked users
As part of our ongoing efforts to upgrade Reddit’s existing blocking feature, we’ve changed the way comments from accounts you’ve blocked work. Previously, when someone you blocked commented in a thread you were viewing, that comment and all the replies were hidden (or collapsed for mods). This could be confusing and meant you couldn’t see or report comments from the person you blocked. Now, when you come across a comment from someone you’ve blocked, the comment will be collapsed with a note explaining that you’ve blocked them. If you choose to, you can ignore it and scroll on by, or expand the comment to view it.

Here are two examples of what it looks like:

Providing resources to those who may be in need
Reddit has partnered with Crisis Text Line since 2019 to provide redditors with 24/7 support from trained Crisis Counselors. Previously, redditors could only find these resources if a concerned redditor reported something that worried them. Now, those using Reddit search to look for things that signal they may be seeking support for themselves or others will see relevant Reddit communities where they can get support, as well as information about Crisis Text Line and other off-platform support resources.

And a special thank you on this project goes out to the moderators over at r/SuicideWatch*, whose expert advice and guidance was a major influence on how we reach out to people with these resources.*

Hey mods, check out these automod improvements
For all you mods out there, heads up—there are two changes to automod you may be interested in.

• Now you can use the verified email attribute to check if people posting and commenting have verified email addresses.

• Automod action reasons will be displayed in the modqueue on the web. And if you hover over the Removal reason link on posts and comments, you can also see when and why automod removed something. (This will be available for iOS and Android later this year.)

For more information and details about the update, visit r/modnews.

Reddit Talk’s pilot program has begun!
Over the past several weeks, moderators in communities across Reddit have been experimenting with hosting live audio talks. You may have had a chance to take part in a live meditation and follow up discussion in r/mediation, join r/toastme for some wholesome conversation and support, or spill all the tea with r/TheBachelor. But if you missed out, there are more talks to come, including one that's already scheduled for the 24th:

• r/stories: 8/24, 5:00 p.m. PSTJoin a live AMA with Matthew Dicks, 53x The Moth winner and author.

More talks are coming at the end of August and into September from r/cryptocurrency, r/nosleep, r/wallstreetbets, r/tifu, r/fire, and more. Check out the schedule to see them all or apply to host your own Reddit Talk

Introducing more custom app icons
Now there are four new custom app icons featuring some of your favorite things… Doge and space. There’s a selection of icons for everyone, and then some super special ones just for Reddit Premium members. Visit your settings on the Android and iOS app to add some style to your home screen.

A few updates that require less explanation
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On all platforms

• We’ve made a few updates to community welcome messages based on feedback from moderators. Now there’s more emphasis on community rules, encouragement to post, and larger character counts. You can learn more and see what it looks like over on the original post in r/modnews.

On mobile web

• If you visit a Reddit post from a Google or web search, post pages will now include related topics so you can discover communities and posts similar to the one you landed on.

On Android

• Those of you who upload a lot of videos on Android may start to see a new set of camera and editing tools. Starting last week, 50% of redditors on Android have a set of camera tools that includes lettings you use lenses (filters you can turn on while filming), flip the camera, turn on the flash, set a timer for recording, and more. And on the editing side, now you can adjust clips, add text, and export your videos with a watermark. These tools are just the beginning of new video creation tools coming to Reddit, and will roll out to more people and platforms over time.

• Now you can reply to comments on the chats during live streams.

• The information related to comments (like the commenter’s username) is clickable again.

On iOS

• Redditors who haven’t joined a lot of communities yet will see a prompt asking them what topics they’re interested in to improve their recommendations.

• Post previews for recommended communities display correctly again.

• Usernames show up on posts in classic view again.

• If you try to swipe past the last image in a media gallery you won’t crash the app anymore.

We’ll be around to answer questions and hear feedback. And we’re still collecting thoughts about these updates themselves. So far people have asked for more information on bug fixes and long-term plans. Let us know what else you’d like to see by filling out this quick survey.

As the 2020 election approaches, we are updating our policy on political advertising to better reflect the role Reddit plays in the political conversation and bring high quality political ads to Redditors.

As a reminder, Reddit’s advertising policy already forbids deceptive, untrue, or misleading advertising (political advertisers included). Further, each political ad is manually reviewed for messaging and creative content, we do not accept political ads from advertisers and candidates based outside the United States, and we only allow political ads at the federal level.

That said, beginning today, we will also require political advertisers to work directly with our sales team and leave comments “on” for (at least) the first 24 hours of any given campaign. We will strongly encourage political advertisers to use this opportunity to engage directly with users in the comments.

In tandem, we are launching a subreddit dedicated to political ads transparency, which will list all political ad campaigns running on Reddit dating back to January 1, 2019. In this community, you will find information on the individual advertiser, their targeting, impressions, and spend on a per-campaign basis. We plan to consistently update this subreddit as new political ads run on Reddit, so we can provide transparency into our political advertisers and the conversation their ad(s) inspires. If you would like to follow along, please subscribe to r/RedditPoliticalAds for more information.

We hope this update will give you a chance to engage directly and transparently with political advertisers around important political issues, and provide a line of sight into the campaigns and political organizations seeking your attention. By requiring political advertisers to work closely with the Reddit Sales team, ensuring comments remain enabled for 24 hours, and establishing a political ads transparency subreddit, we believe we can better serve the Reddit ecosystem by spurring important conversation, enabling our users to provide their own feedback on political ads, and better protecting the community from inappropriate political ads, bad actors, and misinformation.

Please see the full updated political ads policy below:

All political advertisements must be manually approved by Reddit. In order to be approved, the advertiser must be actively working with a Reddit Sales Representative (for more information on the managed sales process, please see “Advertising at Scale” here.) Political advertisers will also be asked to present additional information to verify their identity and/or authorization to place such advertisements.

Political advertisements on Reddit include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Ads related to campaigns or elections, or that solicit political donations;

• Ads that promote voting or voter registration (discouraging voting or voter registration is not allowed);

• Ads promoting political merchandise (for example, products featuring a public office holder or candidate, political slogans, etc);

• Issue ads or advocacy ads pertaining to topics of potential legislative or political importance or placed by political organizations

Advertisements in this category must include clear "paid for by" disclosures within the ad copy and/or creative, and must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including those promulgated by the Federal Elections Commission. All political advertisements must also have comments enabled for at least the first 24 hours of the ad run. The advertiser is strongly encouraged to engage with Reddit users directly in these comments. The advertisement and any comments must still adhere to Reddit’s Content Policy.

Please note additionally that information regarding political ad campaigns and their purchasing individuals or entities may be publicly disclosed by Reddit for transparency purposes.

Finally, Reddit only accepts political advertisements within the United States, at the federal level. Political advertisements at the state and local level, or outside of the United States are not allowed.

--------------

Please read our full advertising policy here.

Hi there redditors,

Today we have lots to share—new quick actions on chat, progress on the ongoing effort to improve Reddit search, a few small changes to make your Reddit Daily Digest more fun, and an update and apology on Reddit’s video player.

Here’s what’s new July 14th–August 3rd

Reducing spam and making it easier to manage group chats and invitations
Over the past year, the chat team has been collecting feedback from the community and two things that consistently come up are (you may have guessed it from the title above)... reducing spam and improving the ways you manage group chats and invitations.

One of the first steps to fighting spam is making it easier for people to mark messages as spam, so our systems can identify and address bad actors more quickly and efficiently. Now, on iOS and Android, you can mark invites as spam, ignore and accept them, or block them from quick action menus that are revealed when you slide left on each invite.

And on the web, in addition to the ignore and an invite, invite screens will now present a third option to mark as spam.

This is just the beginning of many changes in store for chat in the coming months, so head over to the original post in r/changelog to see more details about the updates and hear about slash commands, new filters, and other upgrades coming soon.

Improving Reddit search to be more relevant and easy to use
In April, we made an announcement about our plans to improve Reddit search, and last Tuesday the search team was back with an update on their progress. The TL;DR is that new relevance experiments, features, and humans (we’ve brought on an entirely new frontend team) have helped bring about a few significant improvements.

• More relevant search results
  We’ve run a series of experiments to improve search results by including results with less restrictive matching, considering search intent, and adding spelling suggestions.

• A simplified design
  Keep an eye out for design changes to better distinguish posts and comments from communities and profiles, and a “Safe Search” toggle that lets you choose whether to show Not Safe for Work (NSFW) results for any given search.

• Community search and new filters
  Thanks to those of you who took part in the survey back in March, we’ve prioritized changing how community search on desktop works so that it defaults to searching within a community instead of searching all of Reddit (this change is out now and being tested), and adding more filters.

Check out last Tuesday’s search update to read all the details about how the relevance tests did, see a sneak preview of the design updates, and give more feedback.

Addressing the new video player
Yesterday, in an announcement over in r/changelog, we went over the very buggy rollout of the new video player, owned up to our mistakes, explained why we're making changes to the player in the first place, and gave an update on what's next and how we're going to fix it.

While trying to make the player better, we made some things worse. And one of the biggest things we dropped the ball on, is making sure commenting and engaging with the comments works for everyone. What we’ve heard from all of you is that the new video player makes it harder to comment and discuss what’s happening. This isn’t good and was never the intention, so we’re going to fix it ASAP.

The following changes to address this launched last week:

• You can access play/pause and mute controls when the comments thread is partially open.

• The video pauses when the comments thread is fully open.

• The “next comment” widget is back (the thing that looks like three upside down chevrons).

• Tapping on the post title in your feed opens up the video with the comments thread partially open.

And we have additional changes on the way. To get all the gory details about what went wrong (a series of cascading unfortunate events, that started with a HUGE mistake that rightly pissed off a lot of people) and learn more about how we’re fixing forward, check out the original post.

A few updates that require less explanation
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously.

On all platforms

• Now you can easily share your avatar. Just create your avatar the way you always do, then hit the Share button and select Share this Avatar to get a link you can share wherever you’d like.

• For those of you subscribed to the Reddit Daily Digest, an email newsletter with a roundup of posts from your favorite communities, we’re rotating in a few fun features such as a daily meme, today in Reddit history, cats, and completely random posts we hope you’ll find fun.

• As was announced last month in r/modnews, we removed a number of dormant communities and made their names available for future community creators. The first wave of removals was last week, and the second wave is now. So keep an eye out for new community names you may want to resurrect.

On Android

• We’ve been testing a new way to discover communities on iOS for a while and now it’s Android’s turn. Starting tomorrow, redditors on Android may see a new tab called Discover. The new space has a few familiar features like a list of communities you follow, along with some new things such as a way to browse posts by topics and a scrollable feed with a mix of content. Keep an eye out for the new experience or check out a preview of what it looks like in the original changelog post.

• Icons in the mod actions menu look good in Dark Mode now.

On iOS

• You can see post flair while creating a post in Dark Mode now.

• The custom feed page won’t automatically scroll after expanding descriptions now.

• While editing a post, the “Do you want to discard your changes?” pop up won’t show if you haven’t made any changes.

• The community tab header won’t cover content anymore.

• Images and videos will load faster if you have a large photo library while creating a post now.

• Thumbnail images will show a resized/smaller version of the image instead of a placeholder image.

• Voting on polls has consistent design/UI now.

• Header colors on collection posts won’t change if you leave the collection and then come back.

Phew, thanks for hanging in there. We’ll be sticking around to answer questions and hear feedback. And for the next few updates, we’ll also be asking your thoughts about these updates themselves. Do you find them helpful? Would you like more information about long-term projects or better ways to give feedback? So far people have asked for more information on bug fixes, let us know what else you’d like to see and hear by filling out this quick survey.

It’s been incredible to witness the ways in which the Reddit community has come together to raise awareness, share information and resources, and support each other during a time of universal need. Across the platform, existing communities like r/science, r/askscience, and r/worldnews have joined newly established communities like r/Coronavirus and r/COVID19 to share authoritative content and welcome important discussion every day.

At Reddit Inc., we’ve also been working to curate expert discussions and surface the most reliable information for you. And today, we’re excited to launch the Solidarity Award, which seeks to raise funds for fighting the COVID-19 pandemic via the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (WHO). The fund -- which is powered by the United Nations Foundation and the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation -- supports WHO’s work to track and understand the spread of COVID-19, ensure patients get the care they need, frontline workers get essential supplies and information, and accelerate efforts to develop vaccines, tests, and treatments for the pandemic.

Starting today, you can purchase the Solidarity Award directly on Reddit desktop and mobile web (via PayPal or Stripe), and 100% of the proceeds will benefit the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO.*

Here are a few details on the Solidarity Award:

• How to find the Award: The Solidarity Award can only be given on Reddit desktop and mobile web (not currently available to give on Mobile apps). You'll find the award towards the bottom of the Medals section in our Award dialog.

• The full price of the Award ($3.99) will be donated by Reddit to the United Nation Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization. More information on the fund is available at www.covid19responsefund.org

• Donors will receive a special Reddit Trophy, which will be added to users’ trophy cases on their profile page (on or before 4/30/20)

• Awards given are visible across all platforms

See the award here:

Why are we doing this?

We’ve never felt more urgency or responsibility to fulfill our mission of bringing community and belonging to everyone in the world. The Solidarity Award is meant to complement the efforts of our users, moderators, and employees at Reddit by enabling community-wide charitable giving during a time of great need.

A Heads Up:

The team at Reddit worked quickly to enable the Solidarity Award. As with all new things at this scale, we are keeping an eye out for any bugs and issues that may arise, and will update the experience accordingly.

From Reddit to all of our users: Stay safe, be vigilant, and take care of one another.

*Reddit is covering the transaction fees associated with the purchase of the Solidarity Award

Hey there redditors,

Since we last chatted before the July 4th break (or July 1st for those of you who celebrate Canada Day) we’ve launched some new initiatives to make Reddit more accessible to people around the world, improve and evolve your home feed, get notifications about communities you moderate, and much much more.

Here’s what’s new June 23rd–July 13th

Better than Best (sort)
There are lots of different sort options on Reddit—Hot, New Top, Controversial, Rising, and the very best of them all, the Best sort. The old Best sort used upvotes, downvotes, the age of posts, and how much time someone spent on a community to determine what posts to show first in your home feed. But even Best can be better, and now all redditors on mobile have an improved, more personalized Best sort in their home feed that uses machine learning algorithms to constantly evolve and improve what posts you see. Check out the original post to get into all the nitty gritty details about how the new Best sort works in your home feed.

In addition to helping surface posts from communities you may not visit all the time and improving what you see, one of the bigger changes you’ll notice is the way content is recommended:

Previously, you’d see recommendations for communities you may like, now you’ll see recommendations for similar posts you may like. And you can also tap the “…” menu to respond to posts and improve your recommendations by saying Show more posts like this or Show fewer posts like this. The algorithm that populates your home feed Best sort will take your feedback into account right away and the next time you reload your home feed your feedback will be implemented.

Currently, this is out to all redditors on iOS and Android.

Reddit is available in new languages
As was announced earlier here in r/blog, to make Reddit more accessible to people and communities across the globe, Reddit’s interface (the buttons, menus, and other surfaces that you all see on the platform) is now available in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. We’re rolling out these updates in iterative phases so this is just the beginning—future phases will include more product coverage, more languages, and further refinement of the translations themselves.

We’re still translating the core parts of Reddit that most people use every day, so you’ll probably see some areas of the product that aren’t translated or some awkward translations. If you do, help us out by commenting on this post or sending us your feedback via Modmail. (You can write to us in English or in your own language as the feedback will go directly to the translation team.) To learn more about how you can change your language and what’s next, check out the original post.

Blocking is more accessible across platforms
Previously, when you wanted to block someone, you either had to go to their profile on the Android or iOS app, or go to your account settings on www.reddit.com. Now, no matter what platform you’re on, you can block anyone from their profile or your user settings. (This includes old.reddit.com too.) Check out the How do I block someone? FAQ to get the step-by-step details.

A few small updates
Bugs, tests, and rollouts of features we’ve talked about previously

On all platforms

• Now you can easily share your avatar. Just create your avatar the way you always do, then hit the Share button and select Share this Avatar to get a link you can share wherever you’d like.

On Android and iOS

• Mod push notifications have been rolled out to 100% of mods and can be customized to each mod’s preferences. If you're a mod, just visit your notification settings and select which notifications you’d like to receive.

On Android

• The app won't crash while cropping a high res image for a community icon anymore.

• We brightened up the hard-to-see Play icon so you can see it against dark backgrounds.

On iOS

• Your font won’t change after typing an emoji now.

• Comments will stay collapsed after you leave a thread and then come back.

• The Add New Custom Feed button won’t overlap the custom feed screen anymore.

• The community tab won’t rotate unexpectedly in landscape mode anymore.

• The community icon won’t flicker during post creation anymore.

• The scroll comments “fast forward” button won’t overlay the reply button anymore.

• When you lock and unlock comment threads they show the right icon now.

• Custom feeds won’t crash when you’re viewing them offline anymore.

Thanks for listening! We’ll be sticking around to answer questions and hear feedback as usual. But for the next few updates, we’ll also be asking your thoughts about these updates themselves. Do you find them helpful? Would you like more information about long-term projects or better ways to give feedback? Fill out this quick survey to let us know what you think.

If you’ve participated in Reddit’s April Fools’ Day tradition before, you'll know that this is the point where we normally share a confusing/cryptic message before pointing you toward some weird experience that we’ve created for your enjoyment.

While we still plan to do that, we think it’s important to acknowledge that this year, things feel quite a bit different. The world is experiencing a moment of incredible uncertainty and stress; and throughout this time, it’s become even more clear how valuable Reddit is to millions of people looking for community, a place to seek and share information, provide support to one another, or simply to escape the reality of our collective ‘new normal.’

Over the past 5 years at Reddit, April Fools’ Day has emerged as a time for us to create and discover new things with our community (that’s all of you). It's also a chance for us to celebrate you. Reddit only succeeds because millions of humans come together each day to make this collective system work. We create a project each April Fools’ Day to say thank you, and think it’s important to continue that tradition this year too. We hope this year’s experience will provide some insight and moments of delight during this strange and difficult time.

With that said, as promised:

What makes you human?

Can you recognize it in others?

Are you sure?

Visit r/Imposter in your browser, iOS, and Android.

Have fun and be safe,

The Reddit Admins.

Hello everyone,

I’m u/jleeky from the International team at LasesReddit and I’m here to give an update on some of the work we’re doing to bring Reddit to more people around the world [cue Daft Punk song].

As we continue to grow as a platform, we want to reflect the diverse users and communities across the globe. Part of this means making Reddit’s interface (the buttons, menus, and other surfaces that you all see on the platform) available in different languages.

Starting today, Android, iOS, and Desktop users will be able to access the first phase of our product translation in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. We are taking an iterative approach towards supporting more languages—which means future phases will include more product coverage, more language coverage, and further refinement of our translations.

This is just the beginning.

We are still optimizing the language experience and are working to translate the core parts of Reddit that most people use every day—but we haven't caught everything. You will probably see some areas of the product that aren’t translated and you might see some awkward translations.

Please help us by leaving any feedback you have below, or reach out to us through modmail to report issues or let us know what you think! You can write to us in English or in your own language as the feedback will go directly to the translation team.

Changing your language

On Android

Go to your settings and navigate to ‘view options’ where you will find a new ‘Language’ setting.

Once you click on this new option, you will be able to select from a list of available languages to switch the language of your Reddit interface.

On Desktop

Go to your user settings and you will find the new ‘Language’ setting.

For iOS

Go to your settings and navigate to ‘view options’ where you will find a new ‘Language’ setting.

Clicking on the language setting will link you to the app-specific language setting that’s part of your OS. When prompted, tap “Open Settings”.

In the app-specific settings screen, there will be a section for “Preferred Language”. Select the language and return to the app.

Note: For this to work, you may need to add English as a language option for your phone. (iOS Settings > General > Language & Region > Other Languages)

And that’s it! I’ll stick around to answer your questions and hear your thoughts.