Reddit’s CEO says r/popular ‘sucks,’ and it’s going away

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

Reddit is “moving away” from r/popular, the default provender for caller users, and plans to regenerate it with “better, much applicable and personalized feeds,” according to CEO Steve Huffman (aka Spez). Huffman besides notes that r/popular “sucks.”

“For a agelong while, we were known arsenic the ‘front leafage of the internet,’ but we’ve outgrown a singular beforehand leafage for everyone,” Huffman says. “You person antithetic interests than I do, and your Reddit should look antithetic from mine. And from your neighbor’s, oregon your coworker’s, oregon your champion friend’s.”

Regarding r/popular, helium says that “in theory, it’s what’s astir fashionable connected Reddit, but it’s really what is liked by the astir progressive users connected Reddit—which is not the aforesaid thing. Having it arsenic a default provender gives the mendacious content of a singular Reddit culture, 1 that is neither typical of Reddit nor appealing to caller users (or anyone astatine all, IMO).” So, successful the “near future,” Reddit is going to “stop showing it to caller users, and unless you work it regularly, we’ll region it from the halfway radical of feeds successful the app.”

The changes to r/popular volition commencement showing up to immoderate users arsenic aboriginal arsenic this week, spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge. Reddit primitively made r/popular the default for logged retired users in 2017.

Huffman didn’t spell into item connected what the improved feeds mightiness look like, and Rathschmidt says that the institution is “still successful early-stage investigating and don’t person much to stock astatine the moment.” However, Huffman did reply to a station asking for the instrumentality of News provender filters by saying that he’s “fully aligned here” and that “when I speech astir much personalized and applicable feeds, this benignant of functionality is what I’m referring to.”

Reddit is besides successful the process of changing its policies for moderators to forestall users from overseeing a ample fig of high-traffic communities, seemingly to trim the fig of so-called “powermods.” As announced in September, opening March 31st, 2026, users volition lone beryllium capable to mean up to 5 communities that person implicit 100K play visitors. The institution says that the alteration volition interaction “less than 0.1% of progressive mods.”

“Distinct communities necessitate chiseled leaders,” Huffman says. “A concern wherever idiosyncratic moderates an unlimited fig of monolithic communities is not that, which is wherefore we’re making a fewer changes.”