For twenty years, the deal on Reddit was simple. You joined the communities you cared about, and your home page showed you those communities. That deal just changed. On Wednesday, October 28, Reddit announced that its home page is splitting into two tabs, For You and Following, with the first one built around algorithmic recommendations in the style TikTok made famous. TechCrunch reports the change is rolling out globally over the next few weeks on the iOS and Android apps and on desktop web, and some people already have it.
The reaction on Reddit itself has been about what you’d expect. UNILAD Tech rounded up some of the angrier responses, including one user who called it “Total garbage” and asked, “Why does the internet constantly get worse?” The good news is that you can still get a feed made only of the subreddits you picked. The less good news is that some of the old escape routes are closing.
The short version
- Reddit’s home page now has two tabs. For You mixes your communities with recommended posts; Following shows only communities you’ve joined.
- To escape the algorithm, tap Following at the top of the home feed. The app remembers the last tab you used.
- The older “Show recommendations in home feed” setting still exists, but early reports say it doesn’t touch the new For You tab.
- Old Reddit is not a long-term fix: accounts that haven’t used it in six months are losing access, and RSS feeds end November 13.
What actually changed
Until now, Reddit’s main logged-in feed was one stream. It mostly showed posts from your subreddits, with some recommendations mixed in that you could turn off. The new layout separates those jobs. According to TechCrunch, For You blends posts from communities you’ve joined with recommendations based on your interests, while Following sticks to the communities you’ve joined.
Reddit framed the change as a discovery tool. Its announcement calls For You “a first step in helping drive discovery that leads to something novel and relevant,” and argues that “a more human internet is not just something you sit back and watch.” The company says it will keep experimenting, including tests that let you hide individual posts or tell the feed which recommendations you want to see less of. Those controls are described as tests, not finished features, so don’t count on seeing them yet.
There’s some confusion about which tab you land on. Engadget reports the app opens on For You at first and then reopens on whichever tab you used last, while Android Authority says there’s no fixed default at all. Both agree on the part that matters: Reddit remembers your last choice. Neither report mentions a setting to lock Following in permanently.
How to get your old home page back
Step by step: switch to Following and trim recommendations
- Tap Following. On the app or the website, open your home feed and tap the Following tab at the top. Stay there; Reddit should reopen on it next time.
- Turn off home feed recommendations (web). Click your avatar, open Settings, then Preferences, and switch off Show recommendations in home feed.
- Turn off home feed recommendations (app). Go to Settings, then Account settings, then Privacy, and switch off the same toggle.
- Check your sort. Reddit’s help center says recommendations show up when you sort by Best, so try New if Best still feels noisy.
- Hide what you don’t want. Use the three-dot menu on a post to hide it or leave a community you no longer care about. It’s a blunt tool, but it trains both tabs.
One caution on step two. Reddit’s help page on home feed recommendations still describes that toggle, but early hands-on reports say it doesn’t seem to affect the For You tab itself. Think of it as a way to keep strays out of your feed, not a switch that deletes For You. If the toggle has vanished from your version of the app, that’s a known complaint too.
Sorting has also gotten simpler, which is not a compliment. Early reports say For You offers only Best and New at launch, and that Following isn’t strictly chronological. Reddit says it’s “testing alternative sort configurations,” so the familiar Hot, Top and Rising menu may or may not come back to the new home page.
Old Reddit is no longer a safe hiding place
The classic workaround for any Reddit redesign has been old.reddit.com, the 2000s-era layout that still sorts your front page by Hot, New, Top, Rising and Controversial. It still works today if you have access. But Reddit has been narrowing that door all year.
Sources: TechRadar, Engadget, Tech Times, TechCrunch.
In 2025 Reddit started requiring a login to use Old Reddit. Then on September 30, 2026, it told users that new accounts and accounts that haven’t used Old Reddit in the past six months will lose access over the coming months. Logged-in moderators are exempt. Reddit tied the move to fighting AI scrapers and automated traffic, and a spokesperson would only say, “We are still working on the future of Old Reddit.” The same announcement set November 13 as the end of RSS support, a quiet favorite of people who read Reddit through feed readers.
If you already use Old Reddit regularly, keep using it, because six months of inactivity is what gets an account locked out. If you never have, the door may already be shut for you. Scraping is the official reason for all of this, and the problem is real: we’ve looked at how much of the web’s traffic now comes from bots, and Reddit’s archive is one of the most valuable targets on the internet.
Third-party clients are in a similar squeeze. Developers of apps and bots must register by January 12, 2027 to keep API access, according to Tech Times. A few small tools promise to help in the meantime, like a Chrome extension that automatically opens the Following tab and an iOS app called Clean for Reddit that hides recommended and promoted posts. Treat any tool that asks for your Reddit login with care.
Why Reddit wants you on For You
Reddit’s growth increasingly comes from people who don’t have accounts or don’t join many communities. A For You feed gives those users something to scroll without making them curate a list of subreddits first. The numbers explain why that matters.
In the second quarter of 2026, Reddit reported 130.3 million daily active uniques, up 18% from a year earlier, and revenue of $805 million, up 61%, according to its earnings release. Only 52.6 million of those daily users were logged in. The rest, about 77.7 million, arrived without an account, often from a Google search. Logged-in users grew about 7% year over year; logged-out users grew about 27%. Reddit has said Q2 was the last quarter it would split out those two groups, because “instant personalization” is blurring the line between them. A For You tab is that idea turned into a button.
Timing matters, too. Reddit reports its third-quarter results after the market closes today, with guidance of $860 million to $870 million in revenue. Its data licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, reportedly worth around $60 million and $70 million a year, come up for renewal in 2027. Engagement numbers that keep climbing help in both conversations.
Everyone else already did this
Reddit is late to the For You party, not early. X split its home screen into For You and Following in January 2023 and only started remembering your last tab after users complained. Threads launched with an algorithmic feed and later let people choose their default. Bluesky went the other way, giving everyone a Following feed plus a Discover feed and letting users pin custom feeds built by anyone. The same pattern shows up in smaller ways across apps: Instagram’s AI profile switch was easy to turn on and much harder to undo.
| Platform | Algorithmic tab | Can you make Following the default? |
|---|---|---|
| For You (Oct 2026) | Not directly; it remembers your last tab | |
| X | For You (Jan 2023) | Not directly; it remembers your last tab |
| Threads | For You (2023) | Yes, since a 2024 to 2025 rollout |
| Bluesky | Discover plus custom feeds | Yes, pin and reorder any feed |
Does a chronological or “following only” feed actually make people better informed? The research is mixed. A large 2023 study published in Science switched some Facebook and Instagram users to chronological feeds during the 2020 election. They spent less time on the apps, but they also saw more political and untrustworthy content, and their political attitudes didn’t measurably change over three months. One Reddit user quoted by UNILAD made a related point from the other side: the new feed showed them how much of an “echo chamber of positivity” their hand-picked subreddits had become.
Reddit says more feed controls are coming. Until they arrive, the Following tab is the closest thing to the old home page, and it’s one tap away.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: How to turn off Reddit’s new For You feature
- TechCrunch: Reddit is the latest platform to embrace the For You feed
- Engadget: Reddit is adding a For You feed for recommendations
- Android Authority: Reddit’s For You and Following feeds
- Android Headlines: Reddit For You homepage feed and Following tab
- Reddit Help: What are home feed recommendations?
- Engadget: Reddit imposes new restrictions on Old Reddit
- Tech Times: Reddit ends RSS support and restricts Old Reddit
- TechRadar: Reddit is closing down r/all
- Reddit: Q2 2026 earnings release (SEC)
- Reddit: Q3 2026 results date and guidance
- CNBC: Reddit and its Google AI content deal
- Engadget: Twitter now remembers your last timeline tab
- TechCrunch: Threads tests choosing your default feed
- Tech Policy Press: A primer on the Meta 2020 election studies
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