Reddit announced on Thursday that it is testing Discord-like chat channels with selected subreddits. With this move, the social network is trying to provide more avenues for community members to interact with each other, beyond the usual asynchronous comment system.
The company stated that it is starting this test with 25 volunteer subreddits; the company did not share a list of these subreddits. It specified that the participating communities have fewer than 100,000 members.
Reddit mentioned that the channels will be persistent in the community's navigation bar so that members can revisit them frequently. The company noted that it learned from previous chat products, such as the community chat room feature, which was discontinued in 2020. Particularly, it plans to give more control to moderators. The new feature will have a dedicated channel for moderators to discuss subreddit administration. Additionally, they will be able to decide whether they want to enable this feature for the community in the first place.
Furthermore, the platform provides moderators with tools like the ability to choose who can participate in the chat, manage the chat queue, and moderate reported messages in a conversation.
Source: Tech Crunch
