Restricted / Private / Public Community

Reddit communities have a visibility and participation type. A public community can be viewed by anyone and anyone can post and comment; a restricted community can be read by anyone but only approved users may post (or sometimes comment); and a private community is hidden from non-members entirely, with access limited to users the moderators have explicitly added. Moderators choose the type and can change it.

These settings are a basic but consequential governance lever. They determine who can see and shape a community's content, and switching between them is a routine moderation move, for example tightening to restricted during a brigade or going private to lock down during a dispute. Going private became a flashpoint during the 2023 protests, when thousands of communities set themselves private to register opposition to API changes, demonstrating how a community-level visibility control can become a platform-wide political act. The distinctions matter for both everyday safety and the balance of power between volunteer moderators and Reddit.