Meta may be building its own Reddit rival with new Forum app: Here is what we know
Forum offers a dedicated feed for Facebook Group discussions instead of the regular mixed Facebook timeline.
The app reportedly includes AI tools like “Ask” for searching answers across multiple Groups and an AI assistant for moderators.
Users will still need a Facebook account, and all activity on Forum will remain synced with the main Facebook app.
After Instants, Meta is now planning to introduce a standalone app called Forum, a platform which focuses entirely on Facebook Groups and community conversations. The app appeared on Apple’s App Store without any formal announcements from the company and seems to position itself as discussion-driven space where users can discover information and interact with communities in a way that resembles platforms like Reddit.
SurveyUnlike the regular Facebook feed that mixes posts from friends, Pages, recommended content and groups, Forum is reportedly made around conversations happening inside Groups. The app reportedly allows users to browse discussions from their joined communities in a separate dedicated feed, while also surfacing posts from other Groups based on interests selected during onboarding.
However, Forum is still closely tied to the Facebook ecosystem. The users need a Facebook account to access the app and their existing profile, activity and group memberships automatically carry over after login. While the platform supports anonymised usernames for public interactions, Group administrators can still view the real identity behind those accounts.
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The app is said to offer some AI powered tools called Ask which may help users search across multiple Groups at once to find answers without manually browsing each community individually. Meta is also reportedly testing an AI assistant for moderators that can help manage conversations and administrative tasks inside Groups.
Anything posted through Forum will continue syncing with Facebook itself, allowing users to switch between the two apps without losing conversations or discussions. This is not the first time Meta has experimented with a Groups-focused platform. The company had previously launched a standalone Facebook Groups app years ago before discontinuing it in 2017.
The reports also suggest that Meta has confirmed the app is currently in the testing phase adding that the company frequently experiments with new products publicly.
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile