Meta launches Forum app to challenge Reddit, sending Reddit shares down 6%

Meta may have just found a new way to put pressure on Reddit, and Wall Street noticed immediately. Meta quietly launched a new iOS test app called Forum, a product tied to Facebook Groups that appears aimed at public online discussions and community-driven conversations. Investors quickly saw the move as Meta stepping deeper into Reddit’s territory, sending Reddit shares down nearly 6% on Friday.

The reaction reflects a bigger concern hanging over Reddit’s business. The platform has become one of the internet’s default destinations for finding human answers, opinions, recommendations, and real-time discussion. Meta already owns Facebook Groups, one of the largest online community platforms. Forum gives the company another shot at turning that scale into a standalone discussion experience.

Analysts at Truist described the app as “an attempt by the company to compete against Reddit as an online forum for public discourse” and said it “represents a new threat.”

“The risk from this move, if successful, is a gradual erosion of Reddit’s utility for casual users who have less community loyalty to Reddit and simply want answers,” the analysts wrote. “This would affect non-core Reddit users more than directly logged-in, habitual users.”

That concern lands at a sensitive time for Reddit. The company’s stock has dropped nearly 40% this year, though its core advertising business has continued to grow. Reddit reported its seventh straight quarter of revenue growth above 60% in April, showing advertisers still see value in the platform’s highly engaged communities, CNBC reported.Meta, meanwhile, continues to print strong numbers of its own. The company reported 33% revenue growth in its latest quarter and has spent the past year pushing aggressively into AI products, recommendation systems, creator tools, and engagement-driven experiences across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.

The Forum itself is still in testing, and Meta has not publicly positioned the app as a direct competitor to Reddit. The company has been here before. More than a decade ago, Facebook launched a standalone Groups app before shutting it down in 2017. Groups remained inside Facebook and quietly became one of the platform’s most heavily used features.

Meta Forum App (Source: Screen grab of Forum from Apple Store)

This time feels different. Public discussion platforms have become far more valuable in the AI era, partly since companies are racing to own large volumes of human conversation and user-generated knowledge. Reddit has benefited heavily from that shift, striking licensing deals and becoming a key source of conversational data used across AI systems.

A successful push from Meta could spark a new fight over where internet communities gather and where people go for answers that feel more human than those from search engines or chatbots.

Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.