Hi everyone,

We wanted to give you a heads up about a new feature that we are launching this week called “Start Chatting.” This past month, as people around the world have been at home under various shelter-in-place restrictions, redditors have been using chat at phenomenal new levels. Whether it’s about topics related to COVID-19, local news, or just their favorite games and hobbies, people all around the world are looking for others to talk to. Since Reddit is in a unique position to help in this situation, we’ve created a new tool that makes it easier to find other people who want to talk about the same things you do.

Redditors can visit a community and click on the ‘Start Chatting’ prompt, which will then match them with other members of that community in a small group chat. In our testing, we’ve already seen some interesting use cases for Start Chatting, such as meeting new people within conversation-oriented communities, discussing cliffhangers from the latest episode in our TV show communities, or finding others to game with online. We’re excited to see other use cases emerge as more and more redditors get access to this feature.

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A Mobile View of r/AnimalCrossing with the Start Chatting Prompt

Start Chatting begins rolling out today and will become available to even more communities in the coming weeks.

For more information, please refer to the Start Chatting Help Center article that answers common questions about the feature and has details on how to report abuse.

Let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

Edit: Some more details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/gafm52/mods_must_have_the_ability_to_opt_out_of_start/fp0r557