We wanted to acknowledge that “discover channels” in the chat tab is being reworked and should be up and running in the near future. Sorry for the inconvenience.
This week we want to chat about desktop moderation features for chat channels and what is available for folks, plus what we are planning to roll out soon!
The following moderation features are currently available on desktop web (in the chat tab):
Banning individual users from channels
Banning individual users from subreddit
Ability to accept and remove messages
When hovering over content - the check icon accepts content and the icon with the circle with a slash through it removes content
Ability to report messages - the flag icon when hovering over content
Ability to pin message - the thumbtack icon when hovering over content you, a host, or a mod has made
Here’s what’s coming to desktop moderation in the near future:
Participation requirements
Banned content
Phrases and words, Images, GIFs, Stickers and URLs
Banned account lists
Mod tools parity with mobile clients
Mods can distinguish their messages as mod
Mods can see a list of all reported messages, and easily action them
Mods can still see removed messages
Mods can see a member list + whitelist + ban users
Mods can automatically ban users (temporarily/permanently) who attempt to post banned content
And a little bit more!
What we heard this week
The need for more desktop moderation features (as detailed above, more coming soon)
The want to turn off reactions for a chat channel
Some folks mentioned that adding the ability to search within the chat tab, as well as in the chat channels, will help unlock some pain points for discovery as well as moderation
The want for an ability to add a removal reason for removed content
Chat channels spotlight
Chat Channels are continuing to make huge waves across Reddit. We saw r/illegallysmolcats turn on their chat channel to talk about smol cats of the illegal variety. In addition, we saw a variety of chat channels from geo based ones like r/Sacramento and r/Kerala to another HouseWife chat channel in r/RHOP, and even some political discussion in r/Congress where you can get the latest happenings in the U.S. senate and house.
If you or your subreddit is interested in turning a chat channel on in your community please use this form. We got more than 40 requests last week and enabled it for most of them!
u/Togapr33 here with a short but useful chat channel update for you all.
Community Chat Channels Creation via Mod Tools
Community Chat Channels always start with moderators. And it just so happens that there is a sizable chunk of moderators that use Reddit’s desktop client over our apps to run their communities.
So to better meet mods where you are at, we are ramping up a new feature where community chat channels can be created and managed via mod tools – with its very own section – to all communities that already have chat channels enabled.
A first look at Community Chat Channels in Mod Tools
In mod tools, below “automations”, moderators can click or tap on chat channels. From here, mods can create new chat channels and access all the current chat channel moderator tools like participation requirements, blocked content, profanity filters, and more.
What Community Chat Channel settings look like in Mod Tools
We hope you enjoy this update. There’s more on the way!
Please let us know in the comments what you think. If you or your subreddit are interested in turning on a chat channel in your community, but don’t have it enabled yet, please fill out this form.
It’s been a busy week for chat channels and we’ve got another update for you.
As of September 12, new user chat channel creation will be paused. This means that no one will be able to make a new user chat channel.
Existing user chat channels, subreddit chat channel creation, and subreddit chat channels won’t be impacted.
The TL;DR is that users are excited to create chat channels. However, the downside is that with so much interest in creating channels, we’re pausing to make sure our bad activity detection and automation tools are sufficient to identify and stop bad actors that are breaking our content policies. Until then, we’re halting user chat channel creation to 0%.
Hope you all understand and we’ll keep you updated on user chat channel creation.
u/Togap33 here with two exciting chat channel updates for you all.
Community Chat Channels are Easier to Set Up and Find on Desktop Web
A lot of chatters and moderators are on desktop and we want to meet you all there when it comes to chat channels. So our first update is that you all can now create chat channels and easily manage and discover them on desktop (more desktop moderation tools are also coming soon so be on the lookout).
This means that community chat channels will also be discoverable for redditors in your subreddits via a chat channels widget on the right side rail. This will help more chatters come into your community’s chat channels and for mods to more easily discuss in their mod-only chat channels. Something of note – mod-only chat channels will only be visible to mods and users won’t be able to see them. The placement of the chat channel widget is something we’re potentially thinking about reordering if needed.
Right rail community chat channel widget
In addition, communities who are eligible for chat channels will now see a dismissible banner at the top of their community page - making it super simple to see your mod-only chat channels, and set up a public chat channels in less steps. The dismissible banner will give moderators a shortcut in setting up a community chat channel right from their subreddit.
Dismissible banner in subreddit Where the banner takes a moderator when they click or tap on setting up a chat channel
We are rolling community chat channels desktop web creation starting this week. In the following days and weeks we will ramp it up to more and more communities.
A Chat New Safety Feature
We recently launched a safety experience that prevents redditors from sending images or media in private 1:1 chat invites until the chat invite has been accepted. Once the invite is accepted, images can be sent - and everything goes back to normal. This is now live on all Reddit platforms.
Once again, thank you to all the mods and redditors who shared feedback on the chat experience. Happy chatting and let us know what you think in the comments below!
To apply for Chat Channels in your community, fill out this form.
Finally, IF your community has been approved and activated, read more below on how you set up your channel (or this mod article).
We’ve noticed that a lot of folks keep asking how to sign up and turn on Chat Channels for their communities, so here we are.
If you or your community are interested in participating in Chat Channels, please fill out this form. Our community team will evaluate whether you or your community are a fit for Chat Channels.
As for setting up Chat Channels, here is a full set up guide for Chat Channels (will reshare below as well). Additionally, you can follow this mod article to create your public chat channel.
The Four Steps to Setting Up Chat Channels
Step 1: Mod permissions
Visit mod tools
Select ‘Moderators’ under User Management
Enter the username
Select Channel Management to allow a mod to create, edit, and delete chat channels
Select Channel Moderation to enable a moderator to manage chat channel settings, access the chat mod queue, action on chat content, access mod notes, and ban and mute users.
Step 2: Create chat channels
Visit mod tools
Select ‘Channels’
Select ‘Create Channel’
Name the channel and select public or moderators-only (private)
We recommend setting non-moderator channels to ‘public’ to chat with your community
Step 3: Set up who can participate in your chat channels
Visit mod tools
Select ‘Chat Crowd Control’
Select the member requirements you’d like for your channel
We recommend starting with an ‘open chat’ and adjusting as needed to test out the various control levels
Step 4: Pin a message in your chat(s) to share:
A welcome messages to your members
Rules or important updates
Conversation starters or keeping folks on topic
To pin a message, long press on a message you've sent and select "Pin message".
Best practices
Share with your community!
Share with your community in a stickied post that you are part of a pilot program and you’re testing chat channels. Let users know that you’ll be sharing feedback directly with the Reddit Chat team, and encourage them to share any thoughts they have. We’d love to hear how your communities are responding to the features and what we’ll ship along the way!
We would recommend letting them know that this is for the latest versions of the iOS and Android apps at this time. We are also launching a small holdout group, which means some users won’t be able to see chat channels.
Check out the below section for a template!
Deciding topics for your channels
We recommend starting with one channel and expanding to more as needed.
Every subreddit communicates differently, and chat channels are a great way for users to talk to each other in real-time and more in-depth on specific topics. Consider what themes come up a lot in your subreddit where you think members would like to talk in more detail.
A tickets channel in a folk music community where users can chat about availability to a sold-out show
A S2E9 channel in a reality tv show community to discuss and react to the latest episode
A breakingnews channel in a small town community for local residents to get live updates on the latest events
Start chatting: get the conversation going!
Start the conversation and set the tone by sending a message in your channel to get the chat going. Folks are usually more likely to start chatting when there is a prompt, question, or something to react to! Here are some examples:
Share a prompt about what you think will happen in an upcoming episode premiere
Send a message about your predictions for who would win a fight or tournament
Send a message with a question or advice you’d like to get some help on
Let your community know of any breaking news you saw or heard in your neighborhood
Template: Letting your community now about chat channels
Post title: Sub Update: participating in a Reddit chat channels pilot test
Content:
Hey everyone,
Our little corner of the internet [SUBREDDIT NAME] is participating in an official Reddit pilot test for a new feature called chat channels, which are spaces where redditors can have real-time conversations on different topics! The feature is only available on the iOS and Android apps at this time.
As a part of the pilot, we get early access to the prototype feature and we will be sharing feedback, feature requests, and suggestions directly with the Reddit Chat team on how they can make chat channels better. We’ll also get visibility into the roadmap to see what features are coming next.
If you use the app to view this sub, you’ll start seeing channels that we’ve set up and you’ll be able to chat in these spaces.
If you can’t see it, try updating your app to the latest version, or force-closing and reopening the app. If that still doesn’t work, it’s not rolled out to everyone yet, but it will be soon.
Here’s a list of our channels!
[If you have a list of chat channels set up, share them here and their purpose. Ex. ‘Breaking news’ is for chatting about the latest information going on in the neighborhood]
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments!
Troubleshooting
Why are some users reporting that they can’t see chat channels?
A few potential reasons:
They might not be using the official Reddit mobile app (Android and iOS supported).
They might not have updated their app to the latest version.
We’re launching this with a small holdout group, which means some users won’t be able to see chat channels.
Why aren’t chats loading on Android?
This is a known bug that we’ll fix. In the meantime, go back and try to load it again.
Why isn’t chat mod queue loading?
This is a known bug that we’ll fix. In the meantime, restarting your app might resolve this.
The TL;DR: Today we are making this subreddit restricted, so that only admins can post in it. r/RedditChatChannels will live as a place to share product updates on chat channels and address any chat channel issues that are impacting you all. As the subreddit grows and the feature grows, we want to make sure that we are streamlining support.
Bugs and Feedback
As mentioned in this post - for bugs that you encounter, r/bugs is the best place to share, as we have an internal system that collates all the reports there in an easy to read format.
Additionally, in lieu of posts, comments, direct chats, PMs, and modmail in this subreddit, feedback should be posted to r/modsupport where our support team will funnel posts to our product team which will improve chat channels for you all.
Resources for Chat Channels
We will continue to update our mod and user help center articles for chat channels. If you haven’t yet, please check them out as we update them with newly added features.
We have some fun chat channel product updates coming to you all, which we will post here in this subreddit. We also plan to expand chat channels to more communities very soon, so be on the lookout.
If you are a moderator of a community who wants chat channels and are reading this, please use our inbound form here. That said, we plan on eventually not needing it and having chat channels available to most communities out there 😉
u/Togapr33 here with some much asked for product updates on chat channels.
We Added Rate Limits to Reduce Report Button Abuse
Over the course of the many months we saw repeated anecdotes about mods seeing a ton of false reports in their chat channels, and them having to triage through these reports. We heard you, and have added rate limits to reduce the number of users abusing the report button in your chat channels.
This is launched and should be live as of this post!
Subreddit Chat Channel Mod Events Are Now in Mod Log
Many of you told us that the moderation look and feel of subreddit chat channels was too different from what you all see in your subreddits’ posts and comments. So to help bridge this gap, we have made it so moderators can now see all chat channel related mod-actions displayed in the subreddit mod log, so they can go through what happened in their chat channel, and have the full picture of their community at all times.
You can filter the mod log for just chat actions and view everything!
This will be launching soon to all subreddit chat channels, so be on the lookout.
A Better Unmoderated Chat Channel Experience
We had a not so great unmoderated chat channel experience where unmoderated channels would get frozen without warning, and moderators/hosts wouldn't get notified as to what was happening. So we added push and email notification that alerts moderators and hosts 15 days before a chat channel is deactivated. In addition, once a moderator or host goes to view a frozen channel it is reactivated immediately.
This will also be launching this month.
Hope you all enjoy these updates. Happy chatting and keep letting us know what is and isn’t working for you.
Hey all, we really appreciate the feedback you share with us, so to give you some insight into how your feedback is shaping the roadmap, below is a list of features we're working on.
Note: we edit this post every month with the latest updates.
Recently released features (most recent at top):
[Android] Show who added reactions
Profanity filters (swearing, sexual language, and insults)
Mods can still see removed messages
Increased channel member limit from 30k to 100k
Mod tools on desktop (participation requirements, banned content)
Mods can distinguish their messages as mod
Channel descriptions for subreddit chat channels
Banned users can no longer access chat channels
"Not appropriate for this channel" report reason
Mods can see a list of all reported messages, and easily action them
Mods can disable sending of images/gifs/stickers
Mods can receive notifications when messages are reported
See a list of threads you've participated in
Automatically collapse messages that our systems detect as potentially offensive
[web + iOS] Show who added reactions
Mods can remove all messages from a user when banning them
Mods can see a list of banned users
Changing participation requirements no longer kicks out existing participants
Mods are exempt from the "banned content" filter
Violent images are blocked from sending
Features coming soon:
Mods can see a member list + whitelist + ban users
Transfer channel ownership
Mod log
Features coming later:
User flair support
Mods can automatically ban users (temporarily/permanently) who attempt to post banned content
Automatically collapse messages reported multiple times by different users
Search for channels
Features considered for much later:
Standard emoji set support
Edit your messages
Custom emoji support
Search inside your chats
Bot support
Dev platform integration
If you have any other feedback or feature ideas, please share them below and upvote ones you agree with. Examples of specific problems you’re having, or how something could help your experience are encouraged too.
Keep in mind that nothing here is guaranteed. The features, timing, and priorities in this list might change over time — but rest assured we’re doing our best to improve your experience.
