New Reddit Feature – Online Status

Here’s what went out March 2nd–March 16th

Online presence indicators that redditors have full control over The other week we announced a new feature that gives redditors the option to share their online status. Our hope is that this feature makes it easier for redditors to connect and start conversations with each other and makes it more clear when people are around to take part in real-time discussions in comment threads. After revealing the prototype, we received a lot of feedback from users who were concerned about how sharing their online status might affect their privacy and safety. (Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.) We hear you, and want to share the privacy and safety considerations that have been built into this feature, as well as some of the changes we’ve made based on your feedback to the prototype:

If you don’t want to share your online status, you can disable the feature from any platform (the native apps, mobile web, old Reddit, and new Reddit). To turn off Online Status on the mobile web, the native apps, and new Reddit go to your profile and tap the Online Status button below your avatar. On old.reddit.com, go to the privacy options section of your preferences, uncheck Let others see my online status, then click save options. When you turn off Online Status, people won’t see any status for you at all—not even an indicator saying that you’re offline or that you’ve selected Off. Accounts that you’ve blocked will never see your online status. Additionally, if an account is banned from a community, they won’t be able to see the online status of anyone in that community. Thanks to your feedback, we also changed the language used on the Online Status controls. Instead of your status saying you’re either Online or Hiding, now it will more clearly communicate that this feature is either on or off with the language Online Status: On or Online Status: Off. If you select Off, nobody will be able to see your status or know that you’ve selected that option—only you will see that your status is off. Here’s what the updated status and controls will look like:

https://preview.redd.it/jf9ncycvzfn61.png?width=1463&format=png&auto=webp&s=243f933c7d70779ddf935000f9fb593715091151 All redditors have the option to turn the feature on or off now. However, the online indicator (the green dot on users’ avatars shown above) isn’t visible to other users yet. Starting this week, 10% of Android users will begin to see the online status of users who have the feature turned on. All the feedback we’ve received was appreciated and we’d love to hear what you think of the updates we’ve made.