Reddit Is Adding A Popular TikTok Feature, But Users Aren't Happy

Over the past few years, we've seen several social media apps add their own version of TikTok's For You feed, with X and Threads already offering one, and now Reddit is doing the same. The company announced on October 28 that it's splitting the home feed into two separate feeds, For You and Following, and the change will roll out globally over the next few weeks. For You mixes your joined communities with interest-based recommendations, while Following shows only posts from the communities you've joined.

TikTok's For You feed is built around recommendations, and in 2023 TikTok let users reset their For You feeds when those recommendations stopped lining up with what they liked. Reddit says its new feed is "a first step in helping drive discovery that leads to something novel and relevant," with the goal of getting people into communities and conversations they might not find on their own.

The site has been testing For You and Following with a small group of users since September, and the company said it refined the test based on their feedback. And while this is far from the first time Reddit has tried to be more like TikTok, many users with the new feed don't seem too happy about it.

Being able to choose your own communities has always been one of the biggest parts of Reddit. If you only cared about a couple of games and your local subreddit, then that used to be what showed up in your home feed. However, that's changing now, as the For You page update adds in content from subreddits that you may not have joined yet.

One r/help user already asked how to remove the For You page since it came back, and we have even seen posts dating back to September discussing removing the feature on Android, too. Users have also reported that the Hot sort function has disappeared from the new home feed, leaving only Best and New. Reddit says it's testing sorting options as part of the For You and Following experiment and has acknowledged the complaints. However, there's no date yet for when the missing sorting options might come back.

You don't have to use the new For You feed; however, you can't remove the tab completely, at least not yet. If you have the new home feed, you may want to switch to the Following feed to avoid content you don't care about. Reddit will remember which feed you used last, so the Following feed should load the next time you open Reddit.

Reddit's Following feed isn't chronological, either, and depending on which version of Reddit you have, you might only be able to sort it by Best or New. If you want to see the newest posts from your communities first, the Reddit app on Android and iOS has a Latest feed that sorts everything by new, and you can also make a custom feed with just the communities you care about most.

Reddit also has a Show recommendations in home feed toggle in its settings. On Android and iOS, it's under Privacy in your account settings, while on desktop you can find it in your preferences. This lets you turn off recommendations when you sort by Best. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to affect the For You tab, so for now the Following feed is still the most reliable way to avoid Reddit's recommendations.