Reddit

Reddit is an online social network platform designed around communities of people built around interests, hobbies, and passions. The platform allows users to submit, vote, and comment on content, stories, and discussions within the communities. Reddit once called itself "the front page of the internet" with hundreds of millions of users each month on desktop, mobile, and the company's Android and iOS apps.

Like most social media sites, Reddit generates revenue through the sale of advertising space on the site, including offering managed ad campaigns and auction-based advertising sales. Similarly, Reddit offers users a premium membership plan (with the base site being free to use), which allows users to turn off advertising and other benefits.

Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, who met at the University of Virginia and brought their business idea to Y Combinator's start-up accelerator. The founders' initial idea was a food-ordering mobile application, which would be rejected by Y Combinator, which then invited the duo to start another project. From this came the idea of "the front page of the internet," from which Reddit was developed.

In less than a year after the launch of Reddit, the founders sold the platform to Condé Nast for USD$10 million. Both founders left to work on other projects. In the meantime, Condé Nast owned the site until 2011, when Reddit and Condé Nast became an "independent subsidiary" of Advance Publications.

In 2014, then-CEO Yishan Wong stepped down, and Alexis Ohanian returned to Reddit as executive chairman, and this would lead to Steve Huffman's 2015 return to Reddit as the CEO. The two worked to update the mobile site and mobile application, develop the site overall, and make improvements in content moderation and user safety. Reddit brought video sharing and the first major redesign of the desktop site in 2018. Similarly, the company build-out its C-suite and expanded its offices.

Around this time, Huffman created an algorithm, changing the way content was served on the site and allowing popular content to rise to the top of the site, according to both time and popularity. The popularity is determined by the amount of "upvotes" it receives, with the upvotes intended to mark a post as important, interesting, or relevant. Reddit is different than other social media sites in that it encourages users to indicate whether content should be promoted or demoted in the context of a discussion rather than whether the user likes or dislikes that content.

In 2020, Ohanian stepped down and encouraged the company to replace him with a more diverse voice. The company appointed Michael Seibel, a partner of Y Combinator who had been involved in Reddit's initial launch in 2005. Part of this move was considered to be part of Reddit's plan to go to an IPO, with parent company Advance Publications expected to retain a majority of the company's shares.

The push for an IPO led Reddit to change its policy around its application programming interface (API). Historically, Reddit's API has been used by third-party developers to create apps, many of which offer access to features unavailable on the official Reddit app, particularly for content moderation and accessibility aids.

The policy change was based on Reddit suggesting supporting these third-party developers became too expensive, and therefore led to changes in the API pricing, which led to shock for many. Especially as 50 million requests would, under Reddit's new pricing, cost $12,000. This followed a similar change at Twitter earlier in 2023, where the same 50 million calls would cost a user USD$42,000. Reddit's change was considered to be, in part, following Twitter's move from earlier in the year and increasing the platform's revenue ahead of an IPO.

The changes in API pricing and what was seen as pricing users with accessibility needs out of the site, led to a moderator strike, in which around 9,000 of the roughly 100,000 active subreddits went dark around June 17, 2023, in an attempt to pressure Reddit into reversing these policy changes. CEO Steve Huffman noted that based on Reddit's user policy, Reddit could remove the moderators who had privated their subreddits, especially in cases where members of those subreddits wanted to continue engaging with them, and where users noted that their posts and content were locked by the actions of the moderators.

The moderator strike took another turn as ransomware group BlackCat claimed to have stolen 80 gigabytes of compressed data from Reddit during a February 2023 breach of the company's systems. The group claimed responsibility for the intrusion in June 2023, during the controversial policy and pricing change, where BlackCat threatened to publish the data on a dark web leak site if the company did not pay a ransom demand—at US $4.5 million—and reverse the price changes. The original hack had been reported as including employee information and internal documents during a fishing attack, but Reddit at the time had no evidence that personal user data, such as passwords or accounts, had been stolen.

The Reddit platform offers users a chance to discuss almost anything. This can make it daunting to new users of the site, especially as it is subdivided into communities, known as subreddits, that offer a place for trends, media, micro-communities, micro-cultures, and inside jokes. Reddit is, realistically, a platform that combines web content, social news, a social forum, and a social network into a single platform where users can contribute content such as images, text, videos, and links.

That content is then upvoted or down-voted by other members of the subreddit. Further, users can share posts, comment on posts, and comment on comments, allowing the community to engage with each other and the posters. Because of this, Reddit has become a go-to place for advice of all kinds, from home improvement to working on cars to technology, while also being a place where many of the memes and viral sensations of the internet are born.

The small communities on Reddit are known as subreddits, with the name of each subreddit beginning with "r/" as part of the URL Reddit uses. Each subreddit is organized around a topic of some kind, such as a subreddit where users can discuss the National Basketball Association (r/nba) or one where people discuss board games (r/boardgames), or less straightforward ones, such as a subreddit devoted to pictures of birds with arms (r/birdswitharms).

Users can subscribe or follow different subreddits, which, in part, caters content the user sees based on their interests, making the site more usable. The homepage, also known as the front page, will show users posts that are trending on Reddit, with these pulled from various subreddits. Further, the front page can surface results from subreddits the user is following, whereas if a user is not logged in, they are shown popular posts that are sorted by popularity and location.

Each subreddit is managed by moderators, also known as "mods," who are volunteers capable of editing the appearance of the subreddit, dictating the content allowed in the sub, removing posts, and banning users from the subreddits. Reddit as a whole is governed by admins who are the employees of Reddit who have vast powers across the site, including the ability to strip moderators of their privileges or ban entire subreddits.

Next to each post are up and down arrows and a number. The arrows are used to upvote or downvote a post, which increases or decreases the post's visibility, and the number reflects the sum of upvotes and downvotes. Further, users' comments can be upvoted and downvoted, and every account has a "karma" number tied to it. The karma indicates the upvotes and downvotes a comment has received, and it is used to boost the commenter's standing in the community.

The subreddits and larger community on Reddit follow a certain etiquette. Known as "reddiquette" and derived from the suitcase word "netiquette," it describes the basic rules of conduct on the site. The basic tenet is that all users should feel welcome, and all participants should be as polite as possible. Other Reddiquette points include the following:

• Remember, there is a person behind the screen
• Ready the community rules before submitting
• Use proper grammar and spelling
• Link to the original source or post
• Search for duplicates before submitting
• Report any spam
• So-called doxing (third-party publishing of personal data) receives banning
• Tag content that is NSFW (Not Safe For Work)