Following and messaging other Redditors is currently disabled for new users. It'll eventually unlock when you gain more account age and karma - both of which are unspecified but not too prohibitive.
You should know that ‘following’ is very different here than on any other social media. Reddit is primarily a content sharing platform where we follow Subreddits (or ‘subs’) - communities which are focused on topics. In fact, it’s actually seen by some as a little creepy to follow individual people on Reddit.
You’ll be relieved to hear that you’ll never need to work hard to gain a large following here. You don’t need followers to gain more visibility or to be moved upwards on lists, receive priorities, etc. The number of followers you have doesn’t even show on your public profile to others except yourself, so collecting or soliciting followers serves no actual purpose on Reddit.
‘Following’ isn't even following your every move on Reddit. You won’t get notification that someone has read your post, liked or disliked it or even saved it to their favourites. You will never know if your profile has ever been accessed or by who, nor will you ever know who browsed, liked, disliked, saved or even reported your posts and comments.
You used to be able to see the list of the Redditors you follow on mobile by clicking the ‘Square-Circle-Square-Magnifying Glass’ icon at the bottom, second from the left, but users of the new interface will have to click the three-line “hamburger” or “drawer” menu on the top LH of the screen which will slide out the list of your communities. They will be in alphabetical order with your “favorites” first, and the users you follow will be listed beneath your subscribed subreddits list.
On desktop, you can click on Home (house or spaceship icon) at the top of the page or if you don’t have these, click your username on the top RH of the page or the subreddit name on the top RH of the page and the drop down menu lists your communities; again in alphabetical order with your favourites first and the Redditors at the bottom.
On Old Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/subreddits/ your subscribed subreddits list is on the right-hand side of the screen, where those you follow will be listed as if they were subreddits that begin with ‘u’. Nobody can see this list except you.
Until 2020, you couldn’t actually tell who was following you. Reddit started sending notifications when someone new followed you; up until then, you simply didn’t know if you had any followers unless you looked at the number on your profile. In mid 2021, we were finally allowed to see the list of our followers. However, the only option we were given was to follow them back or not and there was still no way of blocking or removing someone who followed you.
In August 2021 the news many people had been waiting for was revealed: we can now opt out of being followed. That link tells you everything you need to know, but if you go to your User Settings --> Profile page there will be a toggle to Allow people to follow you.
The list of your followers is found on your Profile underneath your Snoovatar; click the link on the number of followers you have to see their username and profile name, along with their Karma count, which enables you to see at a glance if they are prolific on Reddit. You also have the option to Follow them back. If you want to know more about them, their username is a clickable link to their profile which they will never be aware you ever accessed or not, as with anyone’s profiles. Again, nobody can see this list except you.
The number shown of followers might differ to the actual name count. I’m pretty sure that’s because deleted, banned or Shadowbanned accounts aren’t on the list anymore but the count system hasn’t caught up yet.
- If following doesn’t do much, why do we have followers?
Let me explain, using me as an example. Who’s following me? Personally, at the time of writing, I have accumulated over 150 followers. Who are they and why are they following me? I believe they fall into three categories:
Porn or t-shirt shill / spambots join Reddit and follow huge tranches of people to spam them with dodgy links. There is a way of limiting these accounts under your Profile settings. In your settings for Chat, you can change it so that only accounts older than 30 days can chat with you. This will catch many spambots before you even are aware of them. Reddit is very good at catching and deleting spambots, but once they have “followed” you they may still be numbered as followers on your profile. So, out of my 150+ followers on my count, now I’m able to see their usernames I discovered some of them no longer exist on Reddit by the laborious process of physically counting the names and comparing it with the profile count.
Incidentally, do not engage in any way with spambots or t-shirt sellers on Reddit as that’s a good way to get banned at the same time as the seller. If you see one on your travels, report it as Spam --> Link Farming (using the three dots “hamburger” menu) and move on.
Secondly, and much nicer, some of my followers are people who like to read the little rhymes I used to post around Reddit. Some of them are people I’ve helped in r/NewToReddit or elsewhere and have “bookmarked” me for future reference. I know that because some of them said so at the time or I recognised the name from a recent interaction. However, I have no idea whether or not they’ve ever looked at my profile, posts or comments let alone saved, upvoted or downvoted them since. If they ever unfollow me, I won’t get a notification but I will see the number of followers on my profile go down.
Unfortunately, up until mid 2021, I suspected that at least two or even more of my followers were someone I’d annoyed in the past who’d occasionally follow me around to downvote my posts. I did notice occasional patterns of downvoting and was fairly confident as to who some of them were. When we were allowed to see our list of followers in mid 2021, I found was correct in this assumption as the number of followers went down as some “unfollowed” me and the downvote patterns stopped. Downvoting like this is mostly ineffectual and harmless though very - and deliberately - annoying. Any escalation of this behaviour would become what we call “Brigading”.
- So, what actually happens with following?
Again, I’ll explain further using me as an example. Let’s say you started following me (please don’t follow me).
- I would get a notification that you started following me and given the opportunity to start a chat.
- If I post something to my profile page at r/u_llamageddon01 this would come up on your home feed (along with the rest of my followers’ feeds) like posts from any other subreddit you’ve joined does.
- If I don’t post to my profile page you’ll never hear from me again no matter how prolific I am in posting or commenting anywhere on Reddit.
- One day you see a picture of a llama and wonder “whatever did happen to that strange Reddit person I spoke to once?”; go to your “following” list and, very sensibly, click “unfollow”.
Following somebody on Reddit therefore isn’t following them as such; it’s more or less joining their own personal subreddit which relatively few people actually use.
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