Reddit CEO says r/popular is “bad,” and will go away

Reddit is moving away from r/popular, the default feed for new users, and plans to replace it with better, more relevant, and personalized feeds. According to CEO Steve Hoffman (Also known as SPYZ). Huffman also points out that r/popular is “bad.”

“For a long time, we were known as ‘the front page of the Internet,’ but we’ve moved beyond the single front page for everyone,” Hoffman says. “You have different interests than I do, and your Reddit should look different than mine. And your neighbor, or your co-worker, or your best friend.”

Regarding r/popular, he says that “in theory, it’s the most popular on Reddit, but in reality it’s what it is.” I love By the most active users on Reddit, which is not the same thing. “Having it as a default feed gives the false impression of a unique Reddit culture, one that is neither representative of Reddit nor attractive to new users (or anyone at all, IMO).” So, in the “near future,” Reddit will stop “showing it to new users, and unless you read it regularly, we will remove it from the core set of feeds in the app.”

Changes to r/popular will start rolling out to some users as early as this week, spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said. Edge. Reddit originally made r/popular the default for logged out users In 2017.

Hoffman didn’t go into detail about what the enhanced feeds might look like, and Rathschmidt says the company is “still in the early phase of testing and has nothing more to share at this time.” However, Hoffman responded to a post demanding that News Feed filters be brought back by saying that It’s “fully compatible here” and that “when I talk about more personalized and relevant feeds, this kind of functionality is what I’m referring to.”

Reddit is also changing its moderator policies to prevent users from moderating a large number of high-traffic communities, apparently to reduce the number of The so-called “powermods”. As announced In SeptemberStarting March 31, 2026, users will only be able to moderate up to five communities with more than 100,000 visitors per week. Company He says so The change will affect “less than 0.1% of active edits.”

“Distinctive societies require distinguished leaders,” says Hoffman. “A situation where one person manages an unlimited number of huge communities is not the case, which is why we are making some changes.”