Reddit is preparing to do away with a feature that some believe facilitates stalking and harassment: anonymous followers.

The social media site will soon tell you which users follow your account. Currently, you can only view how many followers you have, not their specific user handles.

"We collect a lot of feedback from you all, and one theme we've heard consistently from users is that many of you want more visibility when users follow you," said Reddit product manager Mayank Jain.

"Currently, any user can follow any other user, and it happens anonymously," Jain explained. "For example, I have 84 followers. I have no idea who they are and I find that to be a little bit creepy. Having this transparency let's me know if they are people I have interacted with before on Reddit."

Your follower list will only be viewable to you—not by anyone else.

"If you are someone who follows other users, please take a second to examine your subscription/follow list and make sure you are comfortable with those users being aware that you follow them," Jain wrote in the announcement.

Still, some users have been calling on the forum site to do more to stop online harassment. This includes adding a tool to block online trolls in bulk, and an option to make a user account unfollowable. "Having followers, especially anonymously, just sets up a perfect opportunity for stalking and harassment," wrote one user in response to the announcement. There's also nothing to stop someone from creating a fake account to follow and continue to harass Reddit users.

In the thread, Jain tried to address some of the concerns. "We have updates to the blocking feature planned, but no specifics to announce yet," he wrote.

Other users are concerned Reddit is moving away from its roots as a forum that offered more anonymity over typical social networking sites. "Reddit is a community, not a social media. Leave it like that. If I want to be on a social media, I'll go to Instagram," one person wrote.

The change will begin taking effect on Aug. 29, starting first with new follows made on the site. Your full list of followers will become available in three months. To view your follower account, you need to be using the new Reddit interface.

Further Reading

Security Reviews