Howdy, Fellow Redditors

Starting today we’re going to begin running a new prototype feature that displays whether or not users are actively online via an Online Presence Indicator. This indicator will appear on your profile avatar as a green dot if you’re active and online, and will only appear next to your posts and comments.

https://preview.redd.it/6soip7f5luk61.png?width=874&format=png&auto=webp&s=314424cf3de6bcb9cd000842641544e9f94dcd82

I know what you’re thinking…

The intent of this feature is to drive greater engagement amongst our users and encourage more posts and comments across the site. We believe Online Presence Indicators could be beneficial to some of our communities where we see more real-time discussions unfolding (r/CasualConversation or r/caps) and to our smaller communities where some users may be hesitant to post or comment because they’re unsure whether or not there are active users within the community.

A few things to call out:

• During this initial phase, users will only be able to see their own personal status indicator. No other user will be able to see your online indicator.
• If everything goes according to plan, we will open up a version of this feature to 10% of our Android users, where only those specific users will be able to see each other's online status indicator. We will continue to update this post as we gradually roll this feature out to more users.
• If you do not want to display your status indicator, you can opt-out of this feature by clicking into your profile (on the redesign or in-app) and toggling off “Online.” Your new online status will be “Hiding.” See the below examples for how this works on both desktop and in-app:
  

https://i.redd.it/rsa2mt5nluk61.gif

https://i.redd.it/8hggkgtnluk61.gif

Questions?

I’m sure you’ve got them! Our team will be hanging out in the comments to answer them and can address any additional feedback or suggestions that you might have.