Meta Launches Forum App for Facebook Groups, Sending Reddit Stock Down 6%

Meta has released a standalone app called Forum, built around Facebook Groups, positioning it as a direct competitor to Reddit in the public discussion and community space — sending Reddit shares down roughly 6% on Friday.

Forum is currently available as a test app on Apple's iOS. The product is rooted in Facebook Groups, which, like Reddit, hosts discussion communities spanning a broad range of topics.

Analysts at Truist described Forum in a note on Friday as "an attempt by the company to compete against Reddit as an online forum for public discourse" and said it "represents a new threat" to the platform.

The Truist team, who carry a buy recommendation on Reddit's stock, outlined the core concern for investors: "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."

They added that the threat would be more pronounced at the edges of Reddit's user base. "This would affect non-core Reddit users more than directly logged-in, habitual users," the analysts wrote.

Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The launch comes at a difficult moment for Reddit's stock. Shares are down nearly 40% in 2026, even as the company's underlying advertising business has continued to grow. In April, Reddit reported its seventh consecutive quarter of revenue growth exceeding 60%.

Meta, by comparison, posted revenue growth of 33% in its most recent quarter — and Forum represents the company's latest move to extend its reach into territory occupied by standalone social and community platforms.

This is not Meta's first attempt at carving out a dedicated space for group-based discussion. The company, then operating under the Facebook name, launched a separate Facebook Groups app more than a decade ago, only to shut it down in 2017. The Groups feature remained accessible within the main Facebook app, but never developed into a standalone product — until now.

The relaunch signals that Meta sees the forum and community discussion market as worth revisiting, particularly as Reddit has grown into a more prominent destination for search-driven question-and-answer content and niche interest communities.

Whether Forum gains meaningful traction will likely hinge on how deeply new users engage with it versus treating it as a secondary alternative to existing platforms. For Reddit, the near-term question is whether its core habitual users — those who log in regularly and maintain strong ties to specific communities — remain insulated from any spillover of casual traffic toward Meta's new offering.

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