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

Reddit is “moving away” from r/popular, the default feed for new users, and plans to replace it with “better, more relevant, personalized feeds,” according to CEO Steve Huffman (aka Spez). Huffman also notes that r/popular “sucks.”

“For a long time, we were known as the ‘front page of the Internet,’ but we grew too big to have a single front page for everyone,” Huffman says. “You have different interests than mine, and your Reddit should be different from mine. And from your neighbor’s, your coworker’s, or your best friend’s.”

Regarding r/popular, he says that “in theory it’s what’s most popular on Reddit, but it’s actually what’s most popular on Reddit.” love by the most active users on Reddit, which is not the same thing. Having it as the default feed gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture, one that is neither representative of Reddit nor appealing to new users (or anyone, IMO). So, in the “near future,” Reddit will “stop showing it to new users, and unless you read it regularly, we’ll remove it from the app’s main feed group.”

The changes to r/popular will begin to be visible to some users as early as this week, spokesman Tim Rathschmidt said. The edge. Reddit initially made r/popular the default for logged out users in 2017.

Huffman didn’t give details on what the improved streams might look like, and Rathschmidt said the company “is still in early testing and has no more to share at this time.” However, Huffman responded to a post asking for the return of news feed filters by saying that he was “fully aligned here” and that “when I talk about more personalized, more relevant feeds, this type of functionality is what I’m referring to.”

Reddit is also changing its moderator policies to prevent users from supervising large numbers of high-traffic communities, apparently to reduce the number of “powermods.” As announced in September, starting March 31, 2026, users will only be able to moderate five communities with more than 100,000 weekly visitors. The company says the change will affect “less than 0.1% of active mods.”

“Distinct communities require distinct leaders,” Huffman says. “A situation where someone moderates an unlimited number of massive communities is not that, which is why we are making some changes.”