Reddit users can no longer see how many people are subscribed to their favorite subreddit communities. The platform has announced that it’s removing the member count metric that appears on subreddit pages — located under the page bio on the right for desktop users, or at the top under the subreddit name on mobile — to better focus on real-time engagement.
The member count is being replaced by two metrics. One shows how many users have visited a subreddit in the past seven days, “based on a rolling 28-day average,” according to Reddit, and the other displays how many contributions have been made in the past seven days, excluding any posts or comments that have been removed. The change aims to provide a better glimpse at how active a subreddit actually is, as Redditors may simply be “lurking” in these communities without adding content or engaging in conversations.
“Member counts don’t tell the whole story. In most cases, Redditors don’t need to be a member of a community to post or comment, which means member totals have never fully reflected true engagement,” Reddit said in its announcement. “By emphasizing active participation over passive membership, we’re continuing to highlight what makes Reddit unique: real people engaging in real conversations.”
This update is part of Reddit’s goal to improve moderation on the platform, because allowing individuals to moderate an unlimited number of large communities isn’t “sustainable,” according to Reddit. The new visitor counts will be used to limit how many busy subreddits each moderator can oversee, restricting them to a maximum of five communities with over 100k visitors. Reddit says that communities with fewer than 100k visitors “won’t count toward this limit,” and that the change will only impact 0.1 percent of active mods.
Moderators can still view the total number of subscribers by looking at the subreddit insights, but this isn’t something that regular Reddit users will be able to see. The changes haven’t gone down well, judging by the comments on Reddit’s post on r/modnews, but the new metrics do seem useful for users who want a more accurate look at how active a subreddit actually is.
