In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your Reddit recommendations whether you’re looking to reduce, increase, or diversify the types of recommendations you receive from Reddit.
What Are Reddit Recommendations?
When signing up to Reddit, one of the first questions you’ll be asked is “which of the following best describes you?”. You’ll then be presented with gender and pronoun options which you can choose to answer or decline.
The question will be repeated on the Interests page. However, this time, you’ll be presented with options and categories around popular topics. Once more, you can either choose to answer or decline.
According to the company, Reddit will never share this information and uses them only to improve what content you see. This forms the foundational basis for Reddit’s recommendation system.
Types of Recommendations on Reddit
There are two basic types of Reddit recommendations. The first is recommendation notifications, the second is home feed recommendations.
Essentially, recommendation notifications are desktop or mobile phone notifications while home feed recommendations are made by Reddit’s algorithm. You can learn more about Reddit recommendations and how to stop them in our guide on the topic.
That said, let’s now see how you can improve your Reddit recommendations.
Improving Your Reddit Recommendations
There are several ways of improving the quality of recommendations you’re getting from Reddit, Here’s how you can achieve that.
During Sign Up or Initial Setup
The best time to lay the foundation for relevant Reddit recommendations is while signing up and setting up Reddit.
Ensure you answer the About you setup questions as honestly as possible. This will help Reddit to mostly recommend more relevant content, especially as home feed recommendations.
For instance, if you’re male, choosing female as your gender will only make Reddit recommend more female-focused content and subreddits to you.
Also, be mindful when selecting Interests and Communities during the initial setup. Only select ones for which you’re willing to receive recommendations throughout your Reddit usage.
Modifying Your Interests on Reddit
What if you skipped the initial setup steps like people who never read terms and conditions? Well, it turns out that there’s hope for you. Reddit allows you to modify your account information. Here, you can update your About you info, among others.
To do so:
Open Reddit and go to your account. Click on your username in the top-right corner. From the menu options, click on User Settings. Click on the Account tab. Here, you can change your gender or display language to start seeing more relevant recommendations.
If you haven’t set your interests, occasionally Reddit will prompt you to add them. If you don’t receive this prompt, you can signal your interests to Reddit by searching topics and following related subreddits.
Modify Your Privacy Settings
Modifying your privacy settings is another effective way to improve your Reddit recommendations. Here’s how:
Go to your Reddit account. Click on your username. From the menu options, click on User Settings. Click on the Safety and Privacy tab. Toggle the personalization settings.
There are a variety of ways that Reddit can personalize content for you. These include:
Personalize all of Reddit based on the outbound links you click on. Personalize ads based on information from our partners. Personalize ads based on your activity with our partners. Personalize recommendations based on your general location. Personalize recommendations based on your activity with our partners.
Modify Your Notifications Settings
Modifying your Reddit notifications settings will also go a long way to help improve your Reddit recommendations. Here’s how:
Launch Reddit and sign in to your account. Click on your username in the top-right corner. Click on User Settings. Click on the Notifications tab. Scroll down to the Recommendations section and toggle the settings you want to change.
You can toggle notifications for Trending posts, Broadcast recommendations, Community recommendations, and ReReddit.
Join Relevant Communities and Post Content
You can equally refine your Reddit recommendations by seeking out and joining relevant subreddits, and communities, and enabling recommendations and notifications for them.
Once you join, get active and start posting contents as well as relevant comments on other people’s posts. This way, you’ll get more notifications and recommendations from Reddit showing you similar content.
You can either join by searching for specific subreddits or communities, or by clicking the Join button.
Go On and Improve Your Reddit Recommendations
Depending on your particular situation or needs, you can greatly improve the quality of Reddit recommendations you get by implementing one or more of these tips. The best part is that they’re all super easy to implement.
At the end of the day, whether you choose to do this during or after initial setup, by modifying your privacy and security settings, by changing your notifications settings, or by joining relevant subreddits and communities and being active; better recommendations are the end result.
