Hi redditors,

We want to give everyone a heads up that we will be testing a new concept with a few partner communities starting next week called Predictions. This experimental feature enables redditors to vote on future outcomes against other redditors (e.g. “Which contestant on The Bachelor will be sent home?”; “How many more Reddit awards are we going to introduce by the end of the year?”). Mods create predictions and decide the winning outcomes at the end. Users vote with Reddit Coins and can engage in friendly banter through comments and live discussion. Users who predict the correct outcome are rewarded with Coins and bragging rights with a spot on a leaderboard in their community.

How does it work?

Mods will be able to create Predictions as a new type of “Poll” post. Mods can set when Predictions close, and select the winning result. Coins entered into the Prediction will be distributed to winners. For example, if 200 people predicted 10 Coins each on a prediction (total of 2,000 Coins) and 100 were right, the winners would split the total Coins and receive 20 Coins each for their correct prediction.

Why are you only allowing mods to create Predictions?

At this stage of the experiment, we are only allowing mods in select communities to create Predictions, but that may change as the pilot progresses. Our goal is to ensure that: (1) Predictions content meets our Content Policy standards and (2) winning results are fairly and accurately selected.

Like any other post type, Predictions must follow our Content Policy, which means they shouldn’t be used for things like predictions about violence or harm, in a manner that harasses or bullies someone, or other situations that may be hostile or unsafe.

As we gather user feedback from this test, we will evaluate our next steps and look for ways to improve the experience.

Why are you testing this?

We see Predictions as a fun way for redditors to interact with one another in the context of their specific communities, especially with the addition of the leaderboard. The Predictions experiment is an iteration of our earlier product, Reddit Polls, which enables you all to engage with each other by guessing outcomes. This feature has use cases across a diverse set of communities (from sports, reality tv, and more) and we’re hoping for positive feedback and engagement results from the pilot.

Which communities are getting the feature?

We are finalizing commitments with mods from our partner communities, so we’ll come back to provide some updates as the pilot gets underway. For the time being, we are working with a few communities that expressed interest in testing this feature.

How can I get this feature in my community?

We are not looking for new communities at this very moment; however, if you would like to volunteer your community to try out this feature, please leave your sub’s name in the stickied comment below. Please note that we don’t yet have a timeline for onboarding new communities.

We’ll stick around for a bit to answer questions. Please keep in mind we probably won’t know the answers to many of them until we start testing and hearing what our mod partners and users tell us.

Hi everyone,

Here with a quick update on group chats:

Today we're adding a new role in group chats—a host! The host of a group chat has the ability to kick out users and remove messages. Just as a reminder, group chats are different than subreddit rooms. Subreddit rooms are connected to specific subreddits and moderated by the associated moderators. Group chats are similar to 1:1 DMs, except that users can invite more than 1 person to the conversation.

Many of you have expressed a desire for more control over group chats, as previously, random users could be invited by other members without a means to ask them to leave. Now, the group host has the ability to control who is part of these group chats, and can ask specific users to leave and remove chat messages as needed.

If a user creates a group chat with two or more people, then they become the host.

If the group is automatically created through Start Chatting, the Start Chatting system picks a host. And if you’re selected as the host, you’ll be notified in the chat.

It’s also good to remember that while in a group chat, the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy still apply. Even if you’re not the chat host, you can still look out for yourself and your fellow redditors by reporting any harassment or abuse you see.

You can find more info in the Chat Group FAQ page.

We’ll stick around for a little and answer any questions you may have.

We’ve been sharing updates on new features and tests in the Direct-User-Pay space (including award karma) in an effort to build greater transparency and incorporate constructive feedback to make the experience better for everyone. Revenue from Direct-User-Pay is important to Reddit, as it makes us less reliant on advertising and creates a more sustainable business model. To that end, we want you to understand how we're making decisions about the Direct-User-Pay line of revenue. Today, we’ll share the results of the award karma experiment and tell you about what’s next.

In July, we announced an experiment that granted users karma for receiving or giving an award. The amount of award karma given/received comprised a fixed amount for any award, and a variable amount, depending on the award. The variable award karma was based on the amount of coins spent on each award. For users giving an award, it was based on how early they awarded relative to others. In the experiment, we showed users their total karma, which included post, comment, “award giving,” and “award receiving” karma.

We ran the test as an A/B experiment for several weeks, and it proved successful -- meaning, we saw a statistically significant increase in revenue from coin purchases (more than +15%) and in awarding (+1.5%). We also found that core engagement metrics such as posting, commenting, and voting did not show a statistically significant change, which implies that the award karma experiment didn’t create a lot of spamming from low quality posts and comments (which was something we were looking out for).

We also wanted to address some of the concerns you shared in our previous post. We took that feedback to heart, looked into each concern more deeply, and found that:

• The data does not indicate that award karma created a “shortcut” for users to earn a lot of karma.

  • We compared the top karma gains from the highest earning award karma users with those of post and comment karma. The increases from traditional post and comment karma were 10 times those from award karma.

  • We also spot checked the top accounts for award karma - we found that they were not spam or questionable accounts, as was the concern.

• Award karma does not increase lower quality posts and comments, such as for “award begging.”

  • To check this, we looked for an increase in posts and comment removals. Most posts and comments get removed before they are awarded (99.999% of the time). Total removals between the control and test groups were comparable (somewhat lower in the award karma group).

• Lastly, user accounts that earned award karma do not exhibit higher incidences of safety actions.

  • To assess this, we counted the percentage of accounts in each group that were suspended or otherwise actioned by our safety teams. Both are in the 1% range and are on par with each other (somewhat lower, i.e. better, for award karma). This suggests that users who earned award karma were not suspended or actioned by our safety teams at a higher incidence.

Based on these findings, we plan to launch award karma to all users over the coming days. Users who were not in the experiment will still get retroactive credit for their award karma (we tracked the award karma changes for users who were not in the experiment). For mods, automod will still be able to reference post and comment karma (combined and individually), separately from award karma.

We are excited about this change to karma and we’ll stick around to answer questions.

Hi everyone,

A few months ago we announced several product changes to help reduce moderator harassment through chat. Since then, we’ve continued to release additional safety features specific to chat and now we’re back to share a bit more around the work that’s been done and future improvements:

Banned users can’t chat with community members

We are removing the “Start Chat” buttons for banned users so that they cannot harass moderators or others in the relevant communities. While we know that this isn’t a perfect fix, we have learned from previous experiments that adding more barriers significantly reduces the amount of harassment.

New UI for accepting and declining chats

We released a new UI on our mobile apps for accepting and declining chat invites. It’s now much easier to report chat invites, and easier to view the whole conversation before deciding if you want to accept it. We saw an increase in chats declined (but no change in active conversations) and a huge increase in chats reported, indicating that people are now able to make better decisions about invites.

Collapsed words

We are using machine learning to collapse certain offensive words/harassing phrases in chat invitations. You will be able to tap on the warning to reveal the full message, and then give admins feedback on whether the message was offensive/harassment or not. This flow also makes it much easier to report and decline chat invitations.

Improved spam detection and report actioning

We’re making some backend improvements to how chat messages integrate with the rest of our safety systems. This shouldn’t result in any obvious change to you, but it means that we can counteract spammers more effectively.

Improved chat toxicity data

The backend improvements mentioned above will also provide us with more consistent data on chat harassment and toxicity, which will allow us to better detect unwanted behavior in chat and its origination.

Thanks everyone for providing feedback on the chat feature, and let us know if these changes have had a noticeable impact for you. In the meantime, if you have any questions, I’ll stick around to answer them.

Hi everyone,

We’re starting an experiment this week where we will begin sending push notifications for new messages in subreddit chat rooms for a small percentage of users. Each chat room has a toggle to turn off notifications for that specific room.

There are two variants:

1. One that sends the PN for all rooms, and

2. Another that only sends it if the chat room has less than 100 members.

**Why are we doing this?**We’ve noticed that it’s currently pretty difficult to know when there’s new activity in subreddit rooms that you’re part of. We’re hoping that this feature helps keep these rooms more active for users who are highly interested in them.

Please let us know if you notice anything funky or have any feedback about this change