Hi everyone,

Stoked to be able to share with you all some much wanted Chat Channel features that will no doubt improve everyone’s experience.

Here are the five new features coming your way.

Remove Messages when banning users on all clients

Now, when mods/hosts ban a user from a chat channel, they can also remove all their messages from the channel at the same time. This option will be checked by default each time they attempt to ban a user. Unbanning a user will restore any removed messages.

Reaction attribution on iOS (coming later for Android and web)

Long-press on any reaction to see which users added them. Chat channel mods / hosts can also ban users directly from the same modal.

Potentially sensitive messages are automatically collapsed — iOS and Android (coming later on web)

In an effort to reduce toxicity, we’re using machine learning models to automatically collapse chat channel messages that are identified as being:

• Severely toxic (in Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish)

• Identity attacks (in Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish)

• Spam (in English only)

• Sexually explicit (except for in NSFW channels) (in English only)

Users can still tap on the message to expose the content. Mods/hosts are shown the message by default, with an indicator that tells them it’s automatically collapsed for members.

We expect there will be some false positives and false negatives caught up in this feature, so we’ll continue to monitor its efficacy — but overall it should reduce the exposure of toxic messages in channels. Here is a screenshot of it in action:

Invite host from action sheet on iOS and Android for User Chat Channels (coming later on web)

Long-press on any message to bring up the action sheet. On this sheet, chat channel mods / hosts now have a new option to invite that user to become a host of that channel.

Content type restrictions (turning off images/gifs/stickers) - iOS and Android

On the “banned content” settings page, chat channel mods / hosts can turn off / on 3 content types that users are allowed to send inside their channel:

• Images

• Gifs

• Stickers

These restrictions will not apply to mods / hosts of that channel (same with the other banned content filters).

Keep in mind that these are ramping up throughout the week and next, so if you don’t see it right away in your chat channel you’ll see it later on. As always, keep chatting and let us know in the comments what you're excited about.

u/Togapr33

[Update]

The Reddit Chat team is monitoring to make sure there are no issues creating a chat. We'll be working on the recommendation phase today, but this may take some time. I'll be posting an update via post and chat channels.

In the meantime, feel free to customize your channels, share your channels with your Reddit friends, and keep an eye out in this space for updates!

----

Get excited - chat channels will be available this week starting TODAY!

You all have been sent individual PMs with instructions - we ask that you create your channel as soon as possible (between now and Dec. 7th) so that way we can monitor any issues and catch problems quickly!

If you do not yet see the option to start your channel, don’t fret! We are gradually ramping up access throughout next couple of hours.

Additionally, here are some best practices for channels as you get started:

Step 1: Complete channel creation and onboarding steps

1. Update your Reddit app to the latest version!!

2. Complete channel creation and onboarding steps here - you can always adjust your channel participation and content controls at anytime.

Step 2: Keep your channel fun and safe:

1. Manage your channel

2. Keep content safe for work (SFW). Participants in your channels won't be able to send NSFW images

3. Remember Reddit’s values

Approve or remove a message

As a channel owner, you have the ability to approve or remove any messages. To do so, long-press a message and you’ll see a suite of tools to manage content.

Report or ban a user

You can report or ban users by long-pressing the message and selecting these tools.

Step 3: Let us know what’s working and what’s not

1. Share feedback in our weekly survey - we’ll post the survey at the beginning of each week

2. You can also share your feedback by commenting or posting on this subreddit or in the “feedback” chat channel on the mobile apps

As mentioned, the recommendation phase is the next step. This will take some time as we are currently ensuring that channel creation is working for you as expected.

We’re excited to see your channels come to life! Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or need any help with setup.

Edit: updated image and update regarding engagement/recommendation phase.

Hi Chatters,

We recently rolled out profanity filters for chat channels on desktop, iOS, and Android, which can be found under “blocked content” in the chat channels moderation tools. For desktop, profanity filters sit under safety filters.

TLDR: Profanity filters help block common problematic content and enable moderators + hosts to select categories of content to be automatically blocked such as profanity, sexual content, insults and slurs.

Our hope is that this will help reduce the need to manually input prohibited words and keep chat channels healthy and safe. With profanity filters, comes a whitelist option that moderators can use to permit certain words.  

Profanity filters are automatically enabled by default for new chat channels, but not automatically enabled for existing ones. Additionally, profanity filters are mostly focused on problematic words in English (for now) and aren't fully comprehensive.  

Please check it out and let us know what you think. Sharing a pic on how to enable it:

Other chat channels updates

• Chat channel user limit per channel has been raised to 100,000 from 30,000

• Reaction authors are finally on Android

• User chat channel creation has come to Web

What we heard this week

We saw some posts and modmail asking about ways for moderators and hosts to distinguish themselves in the chat channel. This already exists and you can read about our original update here.

To distinguish a message you’ve sent as a mod:

• On mobile

  • Long-press on a message you’ve sent

  • Select “Show mod label”

• On web

  • Hover over a message you’ve sent to reveal the quick action menu

  • Click the “✧” icon

We also saw some posts about users and mods not getting reply or chat notifications. Our team is investigating. 

Subreddit Chat Channel Sign Ups Form

If you or your subreddit are interested in turning on a chat channel in your community, please use this form. 

Have a great weekend and keep on chatting. 

Hey y’all, it’s u/judy-funnie here with some exciting chat channels updates!

But before we get into it, there are some new folks (hi!) who have joined the chat channels beta. Welcome! We’re excited you’re here. This subreddit is for you to chat in our own channels on mobile, post feedback (what’s going well, what’s not going well), ask questions, propose feature requests, report bugs, and connect with each other and the Reddit Chat Team on all things chat channels.

Our goal is to build a great product for redditors to connect with each other in a fun casual way, and your input helps us to improve the mod and user experience.

Chat Channels Product Updates

Alrighty, now for some updates!

Threading is (finally) here!

You can now have side conversations within a chat channel. Simply tap on the conversation that you want to reply to and type your message. Tap on the back button to return to the main conversation. Note that you can only start a thread from a message in the main channel conversation. In other words, you cannot start a thread from a message that is already in a thread. In the future, we’ll also be adding the ability to see all of the threads you’ve participated in within a channel.

This feature is now live for all chat channels!

Filtering in the chat tab

To help view and locate your various chat messages more easily, you can now filter your chat messages to view your private one-to-one messages, private group chat messages, and subreddit chat channels that you are engaged in in the chat tab. Select the icon on the top right corner to filter your conversations. This feature is also now live for all users.

Channels Settings page

We’ve built settings pages for channels so that users can easily take actions like accessing the channel link to share with their contacts or leaving a channel. We’ll be adding more features to this page soon - let us know what you’d like to see! This feature is live for Android users and will be available on iOS this month.

Chat channel discovery in the home feed

To help drive more awareness of your channels to your members, we’ve included a discovery unit for the chat in the home feed which shows a snippet of the conversation.

When a user taps on this unit, they’ll be directed to the channel where they can participate in the conversation if they are eligible to do so. This feature is live for a small percentage of users and will be rolling out gradually in the next few weeks.

Other improvements

We spruced up some of the UI to make chat channels for a less cluttered and more seamless experience.

• NSFW avatars clean up: we’ve changed the user NSFW / 18+ avatar to a generic one that is visually less distracting.

• Hiding removed and deleted messages from the conversation: currently live on iOS and will be coming soon to Android and the chat tab on desktop web, we’ve hid mod removed messages and user deleted messages in the channel so that they are not cluttering the conversation.

What’s next?

We’re excited to bring the following features to the chat channels experience in the next few months:

• Pin a message: as a highly requested feature, we’re adding the ability for mods to pin a chat message to the top of a channel

• Thread notifications and badging: adding more notification options so you can receive push notifications for thread replies, and mute and unmute thread notifications

• Channel Notifications: ability to control notifications for each chat channel you are participating in

Chat Moderation Refresher

As a reminder, these moderation tools are available to help you manage your chat channel conversations:

Chat queue: This queue is available specifically for chat messages. You can access the chat queue by selecting Mod Tools > Queues under Content & Regulation > filter to “Community Chat” within the queue.

Chat content controls: You can block certain words, phrases, or links from being submitted by users in your chat channels with chat content controls! This tool is helpful for preventing irrelevant, disruptive, or harmful content in your chat conversations.

You can access chat content controls by selecting Mod Tools > Content Controls under Chat channels

Chat crowd control : With chat crowd control, you can manage what users can participate in your chat channels with various thresholds to choose from, ranging from an open chat to trusted members only who have certain requirements and behavior in your community and on the platform.

To access chat crowd controls, select Mod Tools > Crowd Control under Chat channels

If you haven’t already, you can also take a look at this post for instructions and best practices for setting up and moderating your chat channels.

Right, I think that’s everything for now! If you have any questions, comments, or feedback let us know in the comments below.

Welcome! Thank you to everyone who is joining on to test chat channels. We’re super excited to kick this off, get your feedback, and build the right features & tools to make this a valuable, fun (and easy to manage) layer to your communities.

NOTE: We are publicly announcing this program on Monday, 4/24**.

** At that time, you can share with your subreddit!

Getting started

• Once channels are in enabled in this sub (within the next few days), say hello by introducing yourself in the #general channel

• Review this post, plus the set up guide

• (Once enabled) Start setting up chat channels in your community!!

So what is this pilot program?

This pilot lets you add brand spanking new “chat channels” to your subreddit - for your mod team AND your community. As a reminder, chat channels are an additional way for users to communicate in a fun and casual way in your subreddit, and for mods to have their own convenient spaces to manage their communities - all without having to leave Reddit.

Once enabled, chat channels can be accessed in the subreddit header on the Reddit Android and iOS app. We’ll link the set up guide next week!

What are the details of this pilot program?

The first phase of the program will run for around four weeks starting April 26th. We’ll first enable 3 subreddits on that date to ensure everything is working as it should, and then enable all other pilot subreddits on April 27th.

Your feedback will help shape the product - and we need it! How to share your feedback?

• Weekly feedback surveys

• Weekly mod calls

• Ongoing via the “Feedback” chat channel in this subreddit (once channels are enabled within the next few days)

We will also have a “General” channel for pilot program related chat and support, and a “Random” channel, if you want to just be…random, and off-topic. We’ll continue to share product updates and answer questions as we go.

Why are we testing this?

We believe Reddit should be the de facto place for online communities. To get there, redditors need to be able to communicate in the ways they want. And to get there we need to make sure you all are equipped with the right tools.

With all that said, we’ll share out the getting started guide next week to share how to get your community set up and going with chat channels! Let’s….chat!

Our first kick-off meeting!

On Wednesday, April 26 at 10 AM PST (UTC -7) we’ll have our first kick-off meeting with the Reddit Chat team to share more about the program, our goals, and demo of the experience!

Here’s the info for our upcoming call:

• Wednesday, April 26 at 1PM EST (UTC -4) / 10 AM PST (UTC -7)

• Zoom ID: 85963994147

• Passcode: 803367

Hey Mods!

As we continue to iterate on chat channels, we are also starting some early testing on public chat channels run by individual users.

In December, we’ll be running a pilot test for user chat channels with about 50-100 selected Redditors on the Reddit mobile apps. These redditors will start trickling in and joining the beta subreddit this week to onboard, and they’ll be testing their own chat channels starting December 5th. The pilot test will run for four weeks.

We’ll continue to share product updates and releases in this subreddit for both mods and individual users in the pilot test. For each post, we’ll start to include post flair so that everyone is clear on which updates are for subreddit channels, user channels, product updates, or general updates.

We’ve also added some FAQs below with more information on the pilot test.

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

Why are we doing this?
We believe Reddit should be the de facto place for online communities. To get there, redditors need to be able to communicate in the formats they want, and we’re excited to have started that journey with several existing communities with chat channels! However, there are also redditors who want to create channels to chat in, but don’t have subreddits to create them in. We’ll be testing this option with some volunteer users.

What’s the difference between a subreddit chat channel and a user chat channel?
Subreddit chat channels are run by moderators and user chat channels are run by individual users and are not connected to subreddit communities.

They are similar to group chats, except they are public, discoverable and may be recommended to redditors with similar interests.

How many users will be running a chat channel during this test?
About 50-100 users

What kinds of users will be testing out chat channels?
We carefully selected redditors who are active, in good standing on the site, and are mobile app users. These redditors must also abide by pilot test rules, manage their channels, and be SFW only for this first test.

How long will the pilot test run for?
The pilot will run for 6 weeks with about 2 weeks of onboarding and 4 weeks of testing.

How can a user create a chat channel?
A user can create a chat channel on the Reddit mobile apps directly from the chat tab (chat icon on the bottom navigation bar). There will be an option to create a public chat channel.

Once a user selects this option, they can name their channel, add some keywords or topics, create a description, and select up to five subreddit channels with similar themes.

*Please note that members of subreddits will not be directly targeted based on the subreddits that a user chooses for their chat channels targeting. Keywords, topics, and subreddits are some of the signals our recommendation system will use to help users discover channels relevant to them.

These 50-100 users will also have access to chat channel tools like content controls, crowd control, and the ability to select another user to help manage their channel.

How will you ensure that a user created chat channel is not mistaken for a subreddit chat channel?
Great question. We know that it is important to ensure that potential Redditors who are looking to chat know exactly what conversations they are engaging in and who is running the channel.

We distinguish between subreddit channels and user channels by the following:

• User chat channels are prohibited from using slashes or ‘/’ in their channel names to ensure that they are not creating channels based on existing community names

• In the chat tab, subreddit chat channels are displayed with both the channel name and the community name; for user chat channels, only the channel name is displayed.

What does this mean for subreddit chat channels?
We are not making changes or sunsetting subreddit chat channels! We're expanding this product on mobile, and many features and improvements that we build will be made on the overall chat channels product.

I’m a mod, but would like to test out my own chat channel outside of my subreddit? Can I do this?
We may consider this if slots are available during our pilot phase. However, once we conclude the test and analysis, we can open this up for more people to try so stay tuned :)

Please sign up here if interested!

Edit: formatting and included sign-up sheet.

Hi Chatters,

I'll get right to that point. As we continue to enable chat channels to more people, more and more redditors will join r/RedditChatChannels to find out about the latest on chat channels. The feedback chat channel served us well during our pilot phase, but won’t be a good conduit for feedback as this community grows. Therefore, we are shutting down the feedback chat channel as of this post going live.

This does not mean that we don’t want feedback. In fact, we want more and are specifically looking to this community for how to improve chat channels. We know that feedback is instrumental to how chat channels are adopted, implemented, and improved.

So where should you all share feedback?

Posts and comments will still be open for you all to leave feedback and suggest new things for chat channels. For bugs that you encounter, r/bugs is the best place to share, as we have an internal system that collates bugs reported there in an easy to read format.

But why just posts and comments?

To be fully transparent, they are better and easier for our teams to sift through. First there are upvotes connected to posts and comments so we can see what is collectively being agreed upon as the biggest need. Secondly, we can search through comments for specific things. Lastly, it’s more organized in that we can sort by popular on a daily or weekly or monthly basis to see what feedback trends are happening.

All this to say, please continue to post and comment in this community — especially on our Friday feedback posts. Keep on chatting across Reddit and thank you for all your help and continued help in making this feature successful on Reddit.

Chat Channels Discover Page Update — discovery is being restored and should be up and running soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi mods and hosts,

We noticed a trend where some users were joining a channel, getting banned quickly after 1 or 2 messages, and then repeating with other channels — multiple times. These users are not participating in good faith and causing the majority of bad experiences for you and your members.

Therefore, we launched a new feature that should help minimize bad actors inside your chat channels:

If a user is banned from 2 channels, they’re automatically banned from all channels on Reddit. As you continue to ban users who are being a nuisance or breaking Reddit rules, you should notice fewer problematic users over time as you’re collectively stopping them from joining each other's channels.

This might be a temporary measure until we can ship more robust safety features in the new year, so we’ll monitor its impact after we launch.

Hi mods,

As a follow up to the modmail you received last week, today we are launching updates to the chat channels crowd control feature to include the Contributor Quality Score, an internal classification established to identify potential spammers or users less likely to contribute positively on Reddit. We’ve integrated this classification into the chat channels crowd control system so that the tool is picking up the right signals on users.

We’ve started with 10% of communities using chat channels and we’ll roll this out gradually throughout the week.

As a reminder, these updates will launch to closely match your current chat channels crowd control settings. You might still experience a change in who can participate in your channel from this update, but you can always readjust your settings from your mod tools.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please let us know either in the comments or in the feedback chat channel on the mobile apps.

Hey mods, we have a new feature rolling out this week - pinning!

Now, as a mod, you can pin your own messages to the top of your channel. This is one of the top requested features from you all and we’re excited to get it out to you.

Pinning a message can be useful for:

• Welcoming messages to your members

• Rules or important updates

• Conversation starters or keeping folks on topic

You can pin texts (even long ones), images, gifs, stickers, and your messages in threads. We’re excited to see what other use cases you come up with.

How to pin your message

On the apps:

1. Long press on a message you sent

2. Select “pin message” from the menu options

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to unpin your message

On desktop web in the chat tab:

1. Hover over the message you sent

2. Select the thumbtack icon from the menu options

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to unpin your message

User view of a pinned message

When a user taps the pinned message, that message will scroll into view within the channel. Users will also be able to dismiss the pin from their view by selecting the ‘x’ on the message, so they can dismiss the message once they’ve read it.

The message will remain pinned in the channel from a user’s view unless 1) a moderator removes the pin or 2) the user dismisses the pin.

More on pinning

At this time, you can only pin one message at a time and it is not possible for mods to dismiss pinned messages. This is because there is currently no other way for mods to know what message has been pinned.

In the future we plan to 1) add a “pinned messages” page for mods to view and manage these messages and 2) provide the ability to pin more than one message to a channel. We’ll also share these designs and updates as we move forward.

Rollout

A massive thank you to all of you who suggested the feature and provided feedback on the designs at the beginning of this project.We really appreciate your collaboration!

Pinning will be available to 5% of users today on all platforms (Android, iOS, and desktop web in the chat tab) and we’ll ramp up daily until we reach 100% early next week.

Questions? Comments? Let us know below!

Hi chatters,

Our team is working on a fix to bring back removing all messages to mods.

We're looking to get the fix out during the next release cycle for iOS and Android in the next week or so. In tandem, we are also conducting an internal review to ensure something like this doesn't happen again.

TL:DR: a regression was caused by an update to our system and this particular tool was impacted. We are hoping to get it up and back to you all soon

Thank you all for flagging this over the weekend and we'll will keep everyone posted on when it's back up.

Hello, all. Loving Reddit chats so far. It's quite an accomplishment for a new feature.

If possible, could an option be added to allow only those who have subscribed to a subreddit to enter that subreddit's group chat?

Reasons:

1. Niche subs may have niche group chats that may get flooded with irrelevant content if anyone on Reddit is allowed in.

2. Unlike Discord, Telegram, or Slack, Reddit chats are very open. So, anyone on Reddit can join any public chat. This results in some people preferring these other apps to Reddit. Providing an option to limit sub chats to sub members provides some sense of a gated community and may drive at least some people away from those apps to Reddit chats.

3. Some chats (like ours) may not want to be popular across Reddit and may rather just want to provide a place for sub members to chat with each other without them resorting to alternative apps.

4. Currently, there is a lot of spam and NSFW content entering public chats. The proposed option will help tone these down.

Please consider providing this option. Thank you!

Some of you have mentioned seeing your chat channel member numbers change and/or growth rate change. This may have been because we recently removed banned users from member counts.

Previously, If a user tried to participate but didn't qualify, they still got added as a member.

Now, they don't get added as a member. 

Additionally, I wanted to follow up on my removing all messages - working on a fix post. The  iOS fix is coming soon and the Android fix is out to the majority of you. It should be fully fixed early next week. 

Also noting that Chat Channel membership limit is raised to 100,000 from 30,000.

Subreddit Chat Channels Spotlight 

• FriendsOver40 -- one of the most active and heartwarming subreddit chat channels I've encountered. I love seeing redditors find connections on the platform

• Witcher --- Harry Cavill out, chat channels in. As someone who has played Witcher 3 and its expansions multiple times – i'm stoked to see chat channels in Velen and beyond 

• Karate  -- learn to defend in this subreddit chat channel - kiai!

• CrazyExGirlfriendCW  -- cult show fan following meets active chat channel 

If you or your subreddit are interested in turning on a chat channel in your community, please use this form. 

Have a great weekend and keep on chatting. 

Hey Redditors!

ICYMI

We shared that we are ramping five new features for chat channels this week:

• Removing Messages when banning users on all clients

• Reaction attribution on iOS (coming later for Android and web)

• Potentially sensitive messages are automatically collapsed — iOS and Android (coming later on web)

• The ability to invite host from action sheet on iOS and Android for User Chat Channels (coming later on web)

• Adding content type restrictions (turning off images/gifs/stickers) - iOS and Android

So far we’ve heard lots of excitement about these and can’t wait to get them ramped up to you all.

What we heard this week

• There is confusion on how to set up a subreddit chat channel as well as how to sign up for one. We remedied this by pinning this post on the subreddit that has information for both

• There are still chats missing for certain time periods in Chat Channels – we’re continuing to investigate the fix for this.

• Discovery for Subreddit and User Chat Channels is not clear enough in how it works

Chat channels spotlight

This week, we noticed a lot of subreddit Chat Channel requests for studying and exam preparations. From r/studying to r/JEE to r/CATpreparation it was awesome to see people come together and learn best studying practices, share lofi playlists, and find stress management with one another.

Lastly, a reminder to please use the new feedback form (or comment below) to send us any feedback on the Chat Channels Product (including what things are working for you and what things aren’t).

If you have any fun moments from your subreddit or user Chat Channels that you’d like to share please feel free to drop them in the comments section below. Also if any of you have tried to convince other subreddits to try Chat Channels out, how did that experience go?

As always, have a good weekend and keep chatting.

u/Togapr33

Hellooo pilot testers!

Welcome to the chat channels pilot test for users and to our beta subreddit for all things chat channels! We’re excited to kick off the test in the next couple of weeks.

This subreddit and chat channels on the mobile apps are your main sources for communicating with the Reddit Chat team and each other during the test. We also have awesome mods in the sub who are currently in subreddit chat channels beta experience. The Chat team will be sharing information for both user and subreddit chat channels products in this space.

Before we get into the fun stuff, I have a few housekeeping items to go through so that everyone here is set up for success.

Pilot Test Goals (Tell me why?)

Chat channels are an additional way for users (like you!) to communicate in a fun and casual way. We started with a pilot test for subreddit chat channels and have slowly expanded to allow more communities to chat.

We’re also testing giving individual users the ability to manage chat channels on mobile apps, and we’re excited to learn more about how users can find other like-minded folks to chat about their interests.

The first phase of the program will run for about four weeks starting December 5th. We’ll enable channels for a subset of you and then gradually ramp up within the week to make sure the product operates without any issues. You’ll then be able to start your channel and start chatting!

User Chat Channel Rules

Rules are critical for ensuring that potential chatters (and you) are safe and that you have the best experience possible during this particular test. Here are some important rules to keep in mind:

• Create, own, and manage your public chat channels - unmoderated channels will be removed

• Keep channels safe for work (no nudity, sexually suggestive content, graphic violence, or content related to drugs or controlled substances)

• Abide by Reddits User Agreement (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement), Content Policy (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) and Mod Code of Conduct (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct) during the pilot test

  • Reddit may delete any user chat channel (without any notice) if we find any violation of our content policy, Mod code of conduct, or NSFW content

• Be part of our feedback cycle with the Reddit Chat team for this product - what’s working? What’s not? Found a bug that needs squashing? Let us know your feedback and insights (more on this below).

• For any issues outside of chat channels, please post in r/Help or contact our support team.

• Feel free to post and comment in the subreddit - we ask that you keep the conversation related to chat channels

  • For random/off-topic/fun conversation, chat away in the ‘random’ channel on the mobile apps!

How to share feedback

• Weekly feedback form: each week, we’ll post a feedback form for you to fill out where you can share your insights with the team. We ask that you share more detailed feedback in this form (it helps u/judy-funnie keep your info organized lol).

• Chat channels: For in the moment questions, feedback, help, etc., check out ‘user-chat-channels-feedback’ channel on the mobile apps.

• Post and comments: Lastly, feel free to post or comment in the subreddit!

Next steps

1. As mentioned in your invitation, please join the ‘user-chat-channels-hub’ channel on the mobile apps! This is a space to connect with other users and the Reddit Chat team. Introduce yourself and answer the question in the pinned message in the channel :)

2. Turn on notifications for this subreddit! We’ll be sharing onboarding posts weekly, relevant product updates and releases, and announce when you’ll be able to create your first public channel.

3. Start thinking about your first chat channel topic and welcome messages! Many of you have shared a wide variety of interests you’d like to talk about - everything from quilting, to NBA, to PC building. We’re excited to trial them on the platform.

Riiiight, I think that’s all for now!

Once again, excited you are here and thanks for testing this product and learning with us! Stay tuned for next week’s update where we’ll talk through how to set up your channel, share some designs, and link some handy-dandy help articles.

Hey Redditors,

Happy Friday! You all might’ve seen “Threads” pop up on the Chat tab. That’s a feature we are ramping up over the next couple of weeks. Below is some more information:

Threads page on iOS and Android

From the chat tab, you can now access a “Threads” page (pic below). This shows all the threads you’ve participated in so you can keep track and continue the conversation. In the near future, we will have badging and “new message” indicators inside this page, so you can know if there’s new messages inside the thread.

What we heard this week

• There is a want from redditors to be able to search for chats – whether by topic or keywords within the chat tab surface

• We had a bug that made the number of chat participants fluctuate – we are working on the fix for this

• Chat Channels were collapsing messages that didn't need to be collapsed

• Subscribed community members were randomly added to Chat Channels after leaving them – we are looking into this, as this should not happen

Chat channels spotlight

This week, we saw a lot of Chat Channel activity from a variety of different communities. From r/GenAlpha to r/freemeal to r/ApprenticeUK, it was so cool to see redditors interact on what it’s like to be in the youngest generation, to give other redditors a free meal, and to share their thoughts on reality TV. If you all see a Chat Channel that deserves the spotlight, please give them a shoutout in the comment section below.

That said, if you or your subreddit is interested in turning a chat channel on in your community please use this form. Also, as a reminder, please use the feedback form (or comment below) to send us any feedback or bugs you are encountering with the Chat Channels Product – or to let us know about the awesome conversations taking place.

As always, have a good weekend and keep chatting

u/Togapr33

Hey, Mods!

We’re looking forward to meeting some of you in our kickoff meeting tomorrow Wednesday, April 26, at 10 AM PST (UTC -7). Let us know here if you plan to make it!

Now for some updates:

Chat channels are now live on the subreddit on the official Reddit mobile apps!

You should be apple to see the General, Feedback, and Random chat channels when you visit the subreddit using the mobile apps as shown in the image below:

If you can’t see chat channels yet, let us know in the comments below (mention u/judy-funnie) and we’ll help you get access.

Jump to the General channel now, send a test message, and also try doing these:

• Add a reaction to a message

• Send an image, gif, or sticker

• Mention someone else in the channel using “u/” or “@” (try u/judy-funnie or u/ryfi–)

If you notice any bugs, let us know in the Feedback channel.

Let’s start chatting!

Sorry for the wait -- images and GIFs are back for Chat.

If the devs prioritize this feature and launch it soon, I bet 70% of the harassment and trolling issues here in the Reddit Chat Channel will be resolved quickly. I don't know, but this feature should be the number one priority for the dev team.

Admins and Community,

We would like to present some obstacles that we (r/PokePortal and r/PokemonScarletViolet) have faced after less than 24 hours of creating our first public Chat Channel, presented in no particular oder.

Lack of User Flair

User flair allows the community to recognise the mod team & special users. In our community, user flairs play a very important role:

1. it is a visual cue to our most recognised members (no mods) that the community looks upon and

2. also used as a unique identifier for video game matchmaking (online gamer tag as their user flair).

The lack of user flairs has made it impossible for everyone in the community's chat channels to know who is who. It worked flawlessly in Live Chat Posts.

Proposal: Allow user flairs to be displayed. (Just like on regular posts and comments, even if they are shown as the lite version like in Mobile Live Chat Posts).

Lack of Mod Distinguisher

If Admins decide not to allow users to display their user flairs, at least allow the mods to be distinguished. It give a visual cue that mods are present, participating, and engaging the community they overwatch.

Proposal: Allow the toggle identification of mods. (Similar to the green word MOD and the shield in posts and comments).

Why toggle? Because in some communities it is best for mods to not reveal themselves due to the hostile nature of either the subreddit or the users.

Cant edit messages

This is greatly detrimental for the single pin that we are allowed to use. With time, important information will change/evolve and while one can comment again and pin that new comment, not all pinned information may have changed, or something extra needs to be added, or perhaps the change is partial. This forces all previous pinned information to be retyped again.

Proposal: Allow users to edit their sent messages or at least the mod team**.** Anyone can make a typo or need more info to be added or partially removed. (Live Chat Posts allowed for the editing of sent messages).

Mod actions (in chat channels) do not register in Mod Log

This one is quite serious:

1. Reddit has always allowed us to remove content without deleting it. Allows for a priority of mod actions: Remove harmful content, then ban user, and not backwards. Chat Channels deletes instead of removing. Our mod team has immediately deleted pornographic images without looking at the username first, once deleted there is no way to track down the username because no mod action in chat channels gets recorder in the Mod Log. Taking time to ban the user before deleting a pornographic image is not a solution for communities where they have an "Everyone" community content tag, no matter how you wish to argue that, allows the image to stay longer, we do not need that image to be allowed a single second more after it is uploaded.

2. No way to oversee the mod team's actions. What if a mod decides he is having a bad day and starts acting on bad faith? There is no record of that. Any mod could be deleting and targeting a specific user just for the "fun" of it.

Proposal: Integrate mod actions taken in Chat Channels to be recorded in the Mod Log.

Bigger proposal: a new Chat Channels Log, where not only mod actions are recorded but also hosts and any other approved users that can take special actions in Chat Channels.

Images freely allowed

Big NO. Why was this allowed? GIFs are limited to GIPHY, a step forward. However, anyone can upload any image or video of their own choosing, 2 steps backward.

This allows for anyone, even if in good standing with Reddit to be uploading pornographic images.

We had that already happened to us (even with Limited Participation settings). And I have seen other fellow communities struggle with pornographic content, some even got flooded with it (their feedback posts and comments are in this subreddit attest to that).

Proposal: Allow each community to toggle the allowance of images in chat posts.

--

We hope that this gives a different point of view and perspective to the Admin team on how Chat Channels are used, and which features (or lack of) benefits and detriments their use. Looking forward for positive changes. Chat channels has a great start so far, and will like to encourage the Admin team to continue on improving such an awesome tool as thing one.

Thanks for reading!

Hey Redditors!

Thanks for taking our poll last week! We’ve shared the results with the Product team for consideration.

For this week’s post, we’re listing feedback we received from y’all in the past week and collecting any new feedback you’d like to share with the Reddit Chat Team.

Reminder to please use the new feedback form (or comment below) to send us any feedback on the Chat Channel Product (including what things are working for you and what things aren’t).

We’d also love to hear some cool stories and funny moments from your chat channels!

Let’s get started!

Here’s what we’ve heard in the last week and what we’re sharing with the team:

• The ability to lock chat channels and temporarily ban users (aka a timeout feature) are sought after features

• Chat’s were frozen for a bit, two days ago

• There is a chunk of chats missing for certain time periods in Chat Channels – we flagged to our internal teams to investigate

• You all can only see the last 50 people that were banned. There’s a want to see past that 50 mark

Chat channels spotlight

We love seeing users come together around their interests. We saw folks in r/Diablo4 continue to group up via the ‘LFG-Bosses’ channel to take out a boss, Duriel. In the user chat channel ‘My dog is cuter than yours’ we’re seeing redditors share some extremely cute pics of dogs.

What cool stories or moments are bringing people together in your channel? Let us know below!

Hey, Mods!

We have a couple of updates to share with you:

🎉Chat channels are now enabled in every pilot subreddit! 🎉

I’m excited to announce that all subreddits in our pilot have chat channels enabled on the Reddit mobile apps! You should see the “Mod-only” channel by default, and your members will be able to see and engage in chat once you create a public channel!

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to create one public channel as soon as you can by following this setup guide here which includes:

• Creating a mod post to inform your members that the chat channels feature is live on mobile.

• How to ensure mods have the appropriate permissions to manage chat

• How to create a channel

• Conversation starters for channels

We highly recommend starting out with one public channel so that your members can familiarize themselves with the experience and are less overwhelmed. We are eager to see how the product is working in your communities, so we encourage you to start chatting!

Having trouble getting started? We have templates below to get the conversation going or if one of your members has feedback about the product!

Template: First chat message

Hey everyone! As one of the first communities on Reddit to try out chat channels, we started a general channel for members to chat. Say hi, share what made you smile today, and let’s chat about [something related to your subreddit]!

Template: Members who wish to share feedback or are having trouble

Hey everyone! As one of the first communities on Reddit to try out chat channels, we wanted to create a space to share any feedback you have about the feature. If you think you’ve caught a bug, let us know in this channel: 1) what app you are using, 2) what version, 3) and the bug you are seeing. For feature requests, feedback, and suggestions, just let us know what you’d like to see!

☎️ Upcoming call ☎️ - CALL CANCELED.

We also have a call coming up Wednesday, May 10, at 3PM PDT (UTC -7) (timezone). We are trying a later time so that more folks can join. We’ll be sharing upcoming features, like how to pin a message in a chat channel, and getting feedback from you. Let us know in the stickied comment if you plan to make it!

As always, let us know in our private subreddit chat channels if you have any feedback or feature requests.

We'll be canceling this week's as we did not have a lot of signups. But, we'll be doing a post instead where you can share feedback or ask questions in the comments! And as always, you can share feedback in the "feedback" chat channel on mobile. Thanks!

Edit: canceled call info added

I'm really looking forwards to being able to show flairs in chat and I wish there was a way to search for users and messages, as well as search inside the banned users list.

The most recent incident is happening right now in the selfies room. Someone or a group of trolls are falsely reporting every message and picture. Over 20 reports in the past few minutes.

https://www.reddit.com/c/Selfies_SFW/s/D8UngL8xmZ

Hey Redditors,

Again, Happy Friday!

We’d love to hear from you all on what you are enjoying with Reddit Chat Channels. Whether it’s social connections, learning something new, or new found communities -- please let us know in the comments.

Additionally for the newcomers, we’re curious how you heard about Chat Channels – please drop that in the comments below.

What we heard this week

• We saw that there were image uploading problems this week – we fixed it

• Redditors want the chat tab to be more robust and to be able to search for topics / find trending chats

• We saw a cool idea for bots to be integrated into chat to help out with moderating

• We saw a want for a mod action log and mod notes for chat channels

Chat channels spotlight

It was awesome to see Chat Channels pop up left and right over the last week. The internal team was stoked to see r/Morbius talk about Madame Web, r/rhoslc chat about all the latest gossip on the housewives of Salt Lake City, people finding kindness in the r/KindVoice chat channel, and alternatively find horror on r/RedditHorrorStories chat channels.

If you or your subreddit is interested in turning a chat channel on in your community please use this form.

Have a great weekend and see y’all in the chat channels,

u/Togapr33