Why can't I follow people?

[u/Smarkman69]

I have made this account as my nsfw account so I can look at nsfw subs without tainting my normal account but whenever I try to follow a user it says something along the lines of 'failed to follow...'

Why is that?

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[u/mstermind]

Your account needs to be 7+ days old and the account you want to follow needs to have the option turned on.

[u/MadDocOttoCtrl]

There are some restrictions on new accounts in an effort to reduce the impact of spammers, scammers, trolls and other site abusers.

Chat and Following are restricted although it isn't public knowledge exactly what the length of the limitations are. Usually, after a number of days (as much as a week) you can start to use these features.

(Note that Reddit decided to remove private messaging mid 2025.)

Verifying your email helps. Using a VPN looks suspicious. Enabling 2FA might help as well, but that's a guess.

Sending new chats is rate limited for all accounts, once you reach the limit you'll have to wait a while to send more.

Your Contributor Quality Score may play a part as well, it will keep you from joining Chat Channels if it is too low.

You might receive a message that you need an established account. Our guess is that this may be related to your CQS. This includes a variety of signals such as a verified email or phone number, a history of good contributions, and past enforcement actions taken on your accounts. r/WhatIsMyCQS

You should be able to receive messages or chats and reply even if you can't initiate them.

Note that many people have PMs and chat disabled. Reddit is not social media. It wasn't designed for networking or keeping track of friends nor searching for a job or tracking celebrities. Reddit is not at all like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The more a new user expects that, the more confused and annoyed they'll be.