What the default settings do
Reddit accounts are pseudonymous by default, meaning you choose a username rather than using your real name. However, your posts, comments, and upvote history are public by default and are shown on your profile page, which is visible to anyone and indexed by search engines. Reddit’s own “Content and activity” controls let you hide this history on a subreddit-by-subreddit basis, but hidden content still lives on in the community where you posted it and can still surface in on-platform and off-platform search results.
Ad personalization is on by default. Reddit has historically offered separate controls for ads based on your on-platform activity versus ads based on information shared by advertising partners, but in 2023 the company removed the ability to opt out of activity-based ad personalization for most users, folding it into a single setting alongside partner-based personalization. Depending on your region, you may see one combined toggle or more granular controls; users in the EU and EEA generally retain broader opt-out rights under local regulation. Category-level ad controls (for topics like alcohol or gambling) remain available everywhere.
It’s also worth understanding a structural fact about the platform rather than a settings gap: Reddit’s User Agreement grants Reddit a broad, royalty-free, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, and display anything you post publicly, including for uses like AI training. Reddit has active, paid data-licensing partnerships, including ones with Google and OpenAI dating to 2024, that let public posts and comments be used to train AI models and power AI search products. This applies to public content regardless of your account’s privacy settings, and there is no toggle that reverses it retroactively. The only way to fully prevent a given post or comment from being used this way is to not post it, or to delete it before it is scraped or licensed.
A reasonable privacy baseline
These settings are found primarily under Settings → Privacy & Security (sometimes labeled Safety and Privacy), Settings → Chat & Messaging, and your Profile settings on the Reddit website or app.
Ad personalization
Personalized Ads → Off (Settings → Privacy & Security → Advertising preferences)
Turning this off limits how much of your Reddit activity and advertiser-shared data is used to target ads. Since 2023, Reddit has not allowed most users to fully separate "based on your activity" from "based on advertising partner information," so this may appear as one combined toggle depending on your account region. Turning it off does not stop all ads, only the personalization behind them.
Ad Category Preferences → Opt out of sensitive categories (Settings → Privacy & Security → Advertising preferences → Ad topics)
Reddit lets you request fewer ads from specific categories, such as alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, or weight loss. This does not eliminate ads in those categories but reduces their frequency.
Profile and content visibility
Content and Activity → Hide everything, or review per community (Profile → Curate your profile → Content and activity)
By default, all of your posts and comments are shown on your public profile. This setting lets you hide your history from your profile page entirely, or selectively by subreddit. It does not remove the underlying posts and comments from the communities where you made them, and they can still appear in search results, so treat it as tidying your public profile rather than deleting a record.
NSFW Content and Activity → Off (Profile → Curate your profile)
Controls whether NSFW content you have posted or interacted with is reflected on your public profile. Turning this off keeps that activity out of your visible profile.
Followers → Off (Profile → Curate your profile)
Reddit's follower feature lets other users follow your public posts. Disabling it removes your follower count and stops people from following your profile going forward.
Chat and messages
Who Can Send You Chat Requests → Accounts older than 30 days or Nobody (Settings → Chat & Messaging)
By default this is generally open to everyone on adult accounts. Restricting it to older accounts cuts down on spam and harassment from freshly created throwaway accounts, and setting it to Nobody blocks chat requests entirely. You can still allow specific usernames through even with restrictive settings, and moderators and Reddit admins can bypass this control.
Who Can Send You Private Messages → Nobody or a restricted option (Settings → Chat & Messaging)
This governs Reddit's older private messaging system separately from chat. Restricting or disabling it reduces unsolicited contact, at the cost of making you harder to reach for legitimate reasons like moderator communication.
Location and personalization
Location Customization → No location specified (Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Customization)
Reddit infers an approximate location from your IP address (typically city, region, or country level) to personalize your feed, recommend communities, and target ads. Setting this to "no location specified" opts you out of location-based personalization. Reddit states it does not capture or store a precise device location, and this setting does not attach a visible location tag to individual posts, since Reddit does not have a public per-post geotagging feature comparable to some other platforms.
Trade-offs
- Hiding content from your profile only affects your profile page. It does not delete or de-index your posts and comments from the subreddits where you made them.
- Turning off ad personalization does not reduce the number of ads you see, and in most regions you can no longer fully separate activity-based from partner-based ad targeting.
- Restricting chat requests and private messages to older accounts or nobody means legitimate new users, event organizers, or people trying to reach you for the first time may not be able to contact you directly.
- Opting out of Location Customization means your feed and community recommendations will be less locally relevant.
- No account setting can remove already-public posts and comments from Reddit’s data-licensing partnerships with companies like Google and OpenAI, or from content that has already been scraped, licensed, or used for AI training. Deletion after the fact is not guaranteed to reach copies already licensed out.
Who should not change these settings
- If you use Reddit to build a public reputation, such as a niche hobby account, an AMA host, or a moderator identity, keeping your content visible on your profile serves that purpose.
- If you rely on chat requests or private messages from strangers, for example to coordinate trades, buys, or community events, restricting them to older accounts or nobody will get in the way.
- If you want a personalized, locally relevant feed and don’t mind approximate location being used for that, leaving Location Customization on is a reasonable choice.
- If you’re comfortable with how Reddit’s business model works, including its data-licensing deals, and your posting habits already reflect that, there is no setting that changes the underlying licensing terms, so there is little reason to worry about the ad and profile toggles beyond ordinary tidiness.