Page semi-protected

Reddit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Reddit Inc.
Reddit logo
Type of business Private
Type of site
Social news and -media aggregation
Available in Multilingual, primarily English
Founded June 23, 2005; 12 years ago (2005-06-23),[1]
Medford, Massachusetts, U.S.
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Steve Huffman
Alexis Ohanian
Key people Steve Huffman (co-founder and CEO)
Industry Internet
Media
Employees 100 (as of 2015)[2]
Slogan(s) "The front page of the internet"
Website www.reddit.com
Alexa rank Increase 8 (Global, July 2017)[3]
Advertising Banner ads, promoted links
Registration Optional (required to submit, comment, or vote)
Current status Active
Written in Python[4]

Reddit (stylized as reddit, /ˈrɛdɪt/)[5] is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Reddit's registered community members can submit content such as text posts or direct links. Registered users can then vote submissions up or down that determines their position on the page. Submissions with the most up-votes appear on the front page or the top of a category. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called "subreddits". Subreddit topics include news, science, gaming, movies, music, books, fitness, food, image-sharing, and many others. The site prohibits harassment, and moderation requires substantial resources.[6]

As of 2017, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking #4 most visited website in U.S. and #9 in the world.[7] Across 2015, Reddit saw 82.54 billion pageviews, 73.15 million submissions, 725.85 million comments, and 6.89 billion upvotes from its users.[8]

Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Condé Nast Publications acquired the site in October 2006. Reddit became a direct subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent company, Advance Publications, in September 2011. As of August 2012, Reddit operates as an independent entity, although Advance is still its largest shareholder.[9] Reddit is based in San Francisco, California. In October 2014, Reddit raised $50 million in a funding round led by Sam Altman and including investors Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Snoop Dogg, and Jared Leto.[10] Their investment saw the company valued at $500 million.[11][12]

Overview

The site is a collection of entries submitted by its registered users, essentially a bulletin board system. The name "Reddit" is a play-on-words with the phrase "read it", i.e., "I read it on Reddit."[13] The site's content is divided into numerous categories, and the most popular posts from these 'subreddits' are visible on the front page to those who browse the site without an account. As of May 2016, there are over 11,400 active subreddits.[14][15][16]

When items (links or text posts) are submitted to a subreddit, the users, called "redditors",[17] can vote for or against them (upvote/downvote). Each subreddit has a front page that shows newer submissions that have been rated highly. Redditors can also post comments about the submission, and respond back and forth in a conversation-tree of comments; the comments themselves can also be upvoted and downvoted. The front page of the site itself shows a combination of the highest-rated posts out of all the subreddits a user is subscribed to.

Front-page rank – for both the general front page and for individual subreddits – is determined by the age of the submission, positive ("upvoted") to negative ("downvoted") feedback ratio and the total vote-count.[18] Dozens of submissions cycle through these front pages daily.

The site's logo and its mascot is a line drawing of an alien nicknamed "Snoo". Subreddits often use themed variants of Snoo relevant to the subject.[19]

Although most of the site functions like a bulletin board or message board, each subreddit has the option of having an associated wiki that can provide supplementary material like instructions, recommended reading, or collaboration for real-life events.

Users

Registering an account with Reddit is free and does not require an email address to complete. As of June 2015, there were 36 million user accounts.[20] When logged in, Reddit users (known as redditors) have the ability to vote on submissions and comments to increase or decrease their visibility and submit links and comments. Users can also create their own subreddit on a topic of their choosing, and interested users can add it to their frontpage by subscribing to it. For example, as of May 2015, the Wikipedia subreddit – subtitled "the most interesting pages on Wikipedia" – has over 151,000 subscribers.[21] Reddit comments and submissions are occasionally abbreviated and peppered with terms that are understood within (and in many cases also outside) the Reddit community, ranging from OP (for "original poster" – the user who posted the submission being commented upon) to NSFW (for "not safe for work" – indicating the post has graphic or sexually explicit content).[22] Users earn "post karma" and "comment karma" for submitting text posts, link posts, and comments, which accumulate as point values on their user profile. "Post karma" refers to karma points received from text and link posts, while "comment karma" refers to karma points received from comments. Users may also be gifted "Reddit gold" if another user has well received the comment or post, generally due to humorous or high-quality content; this process is known as "gilding." Reddit has also created a system of points called "creddits". Reddit gold "creddits" are like gift certificates: each creddit you have allows you to give one month of Reddit gold to someone else. The points do not lead to a prize as they are meant to stand in as a badge of honor for the user among their peers, although redditors have attempted to redeem their points before.[23]

Reddit also allows submissions that do not link externally. These are called "self posts" or "text submissions". Many discussion-based subreddits allow only text-only submissions such as "AskReddit" – where users are only allowed to pose broad, discussion based questions to the community at large. Self posts previously did not accumulate karma points for the submitter, but as of July, 2016, these text-only posts generate karma.[24]

Mister Splashy Pants logo used on November 27, 2007

Reddit communities occasionally coordinate Reddit-external projects such as skewing polls on other websites, such as in 2007 when Greenpeace allowed web users to decide the name of a humpback whale it was tracking. Reddit users voted en masse to name the whale "Mr. Splashy Pants", and Reddit administrators further encouraged this by changing the site logo to a whale during the voting. In December of that year, Mister Splashy Pants was announced as the winner of the competition.[25]

Within the site, redditors commemorate their "cake day" once a year, which is the anniversary of the day the user's account was first created. The "cake day" offers no special benefit, except that a small icon representing a slice of cake appears next to that user's name for 24 hours.[26] Redditors can "friend" one another, which gives a redditor quick access to posting and comments of their friend list. The commenting system and friend system, along with a certain "Reddit ethos" (called reddiquette on Reddit), lend Reddit aspects of a social networking service, though not to the extent of Facebook, Google+, and other websites aimed at providing social networking services. The Reddit community also socializes at meetups held at local parks and bars around the world,[27] and many localized subreddits for local in-person meetings exist.

Subreddits

Nathan Allen speaks about /r/science to the American Chemical Society

Reddit entries are organized into areas of interest called "subreddits". Originally, the front page was the "main-reddit", and other areas were "subreddits". There is now no longer a single main-reddit. Initially, this was removed in favour of a selection of "default subreddits". As of June 2017, this has been replaced again with an introductory page prompting users to customize their "subscriptions".[28] Subscribed subreddits appear on the user's front page and on a top navigation bar, and can deal with a large range of topics - such as video games, books, discussion, and music.

Any registered user who has maintained an account for 31 days or more may create a subreddit.[29] There are over 11,400 active total subreddits to peruse,[14][15][16] including the default set of 50 subreddits as of February 2016. The site has a default "Front Page" which contains staff selected popular articles, and also an "All Page" which contains only the very top ranked article/ subreddits as ranked by readers themselves, and which page is accessible via an "All" link at the top of the "Front Page."

In an interview with Memeburn, Reddit GM, Martin noted that the platform's "approach is to give the community moderators or curators as much control as possible so that they can shape and cultivate the type of communities they want".[30]

Some subreddits include the following:

IAmA and AMA

One of the most popular subreddits is IAmA ("I Am A") where a user may post "AMAs" (for "Ask Me Anything"), or similarly "AMAAs" (for "Ask Me Almost/Absolutely Anything") – prompts for others to ask questions about any topic. AMAs are open to all Reddit users, and use the site's comment system for both questions and answers; it is similar to a press conference but online. This subreddit was founded in May 2009.[31] From 2013 to 2015, Victoria Taylor assisted reddit's volunteer community in presenting interviews.[32][33][34]

A number of notable individuals have participated in the IAmA subreddit or in an AMA, some of whom have appeared multiple times. Notable people who participated in the IAmA subreddit itself include then-United States President Barack Obama (while campaigning for the 2012 election[35]), Bill Gates (multiple times),[36] and Donald Trump (also while campaigning).[37]

As of May 2017, Barack Obama's AMA is the highest rated on the site, followed by those for Victoria Taylor, Reddit's former director of talent; Ken Bone, an Illinois man who went viral during the 2016 U.S. presidential election; Leah Remini, an actress who is a former member of Scientology; and Bill Gates.[38] The increased traffic for Obama's AMA brought down many parts of the website when it occurred on August 29, 2012.[39]

Celebrities participating in IAmAs have seen both positive and negative responses. In 2012, Woody Harrelson's AMA[40] was criticized after Harrelson declined to answer questions that were unrelated to the movie Rampart he was promoting.[41] Similarly, Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra's AMA was criticized for evasiveness when she focused on promoting her upcoming album to the detriment of other questions.[42] By contrast, rapper Snoop Dogg's 2012 AMA[43] attracted 1.6 million page views[44] after he provided several candid responses to the community's questions.[45] A particularly well received AMA of 2014 was that of Peter Dinklage,[46] best known for his role as Tyrion Lannister in the HBO drama series Game of Thrones. Redditors attribute the thread's success to the thoroughness of his responses and the fact that he stayed online much longer than he was expected to so he could spend more time with his fans. The actor departed by commenting:

This feels like being interviewed by a hundred thousand news anchors at once! But much friendlier anchors...who seem to know their material...I really appreciate everyone's enthusiasm and questions. I tried to move another engagement to make more time but it's really hard during shoots. I am going to try to answer a few more short ones now. And remember: If you see me on the street and want a photo, ask! It's just weird when your kid asks for directions.[47]

On July 2, 2015, hundreds of subreddits, including several with over a million subscribers, were set to private by their respective moderators after Victoria Taylor was dismissed.[48][49][50][51] Sources close to Reddit cited an increased focus on commercializing AMAs as the most likely reason.[52][53]

April Fools' Day

On April Fools' Day 2015, a social experiment was launched in the form of a subreddit called /r/thebutton. It featured a button and a 60-second countdown timer. User accounts created before that day were eligible to participate. A user could only ever click the button once, or opt not to click it. If a user clicked the button the timer was globally reset to 60 seconds,[54] and the user's "flair" (an icon next to the user's name) changed color. Colors were assigned based on a gradient from purple to red with purple signifying up to 60 seconds and red as low as 0 seconds. The countdown prematurely reached zero several times due to technical problems but eventually expired without further problems on June 5, 2015, after which the subreddit was archived.[55]

For April Fools' Day 2016, a similar experiment was launched, centered around the "Robin" chat widget. After clicking a titular button, an IRC-like chat window was initially opened with one other user and gave a certain time to pick between three options, "Grow," "Stay" and "Leave".[56] "Grow" would join the chat with another group, "Stay" would close the group chat and create a subreddit with that group as moderators and "Leave" would close the group chat.

April Fools' Day 2017 featured another social experiment based around /r/place. The subreddit contained a collaborative pixel art canvas, where a user could place a pixel every five minutes (the timer was temporarily ten and twenty minutes for a few hours on April 1).[57] Many people worked together to create large graphics, such as flags or symbols. Often subreddits would come together as a group to add a graphic from that community to place. Place was closed on April 3, 2017 at 1:00 PM GMT having been active for a full three days.[58]

History

Co-founder Alexis Ohanian speaking in 2009

In June 2005,[59] Reddit was founded in Medford, Massachusetts by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia.[60] The team expanded to include Christopher Slowe in November 2005. Between November 2005 and January 2006 Reddit merged with Aaron Swartz's company Infogami, and Swartz became an equal owner of the resulting parent company, Not A Bug.[61][62] Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, acquired Reddit on October 31, 2006, and the team moved to San Francisco.[63] In January 2007, Swartz was fired.[64]

By the end of 2008, the team had grown to include Erik Martin, Jeremy Edberg,[65] David King,[66] and Mike Schiraldi.[67] In 2009, Huffman and Ohanian moved on to form Hipmunk, recruiting Slowe[68] and King[69] shortly thereafter. In May 2010, Reddit was named in Lead411's "2010 Hottest San Francisco Companies" list.[70] In July 2010, after explosive traffic growth, Reddit introduced Reddit Gold, offering new features for a price of $3.99/month or $29.99/year.[71] Reddit Gold adds a number of features to the interface, including the ability to display more comments on a page, access to the private "lounge" subreddit, and notifications whenever one's username is mentioned in a comment. It's also possible to endow comments or submissions of other users and thereby give a gold membership to them as an anonymous present.[72]

On September 6, 2011, Reddit became operationally independent of Condé Nast, now operating as a separate subsidiary of its parent company, Advance Publications.[73] On January 11, 2012, Reddit announced that it would be participating in a 12-hour sitewide blackout in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act.[74] The blackout occurred on January 18 and coincided with the blackouts of Wikipedia and several other websites. In May 2012, Reddit joined the Internet Defense League, a group formed to organize future protests.[75] On February 14, 2013, Reddit began accepting the digital currency bitcoin for its Reddit Gold subscription service through a partnership with bitcoin payment processor Coinbase.[76]

In October 2014, Reddit announced Redditmade, a service which allowed moderators to create merchandise for their subreddits. Redditmade closed in February 2015.[77] In November 2014, Chief Executive Yishan Wong resigned and co-founder Ohanian returned as the full-time executive chairman. Ellen Pao, Reddit's business and partnerships strategist became the interim chief executive.[78] On July 10, 2015, Pao resigned and was replaced by Steve Huffman as CEO.[79][80]

In October 2015, Reddit announced a news portal called Upvoted, designed to broaden the reach of Reddit as a standalone site featuring editorial content from Reddit users.[81] In April 2016, Reddit launched a new blocking tool in an attempt to curb online harassment. The tool allows a user to hide posts and comments from selected redditors in addition to blocking private messages from those redditors.[82] The option to block a redditor is done by clicking a button in the inbox.

Technology

Reddit was originally written in Common Lisp but was rewritten in Python in December 2005.[4] The reasons given for the switch were wider access to code libraries and greater development flexibility. The Python web framework that former Reddit employee Swartz developed to run the site, web.py, is now available as an open-source project.[83] On June 18, 2008, Reddit became an open source project.[84] With the exception of the anti-spam/cheating portions, all of the code and libraries written for Reddit became freely available on GitHub.[85] As of November 10, 2009, Reddit uses Pylons as its web framework.[86]

As of November 10, 2009, Reddit has decommissioned their physical servers and migrated to Amazon Web Services.[87] Reddit uses PostgreSQL as their primary datastore and is slowly moving to Apache Cassandra, a column-oriented datastore. It uses RabbitMQ for offline processing, HAProxy for load balancing and memcached for caching. In early 2009, Reddit started using jQuery.[88] On June 7, 2010, Reddit staff launched a revamped mobile interface featuring rewritten CSS, a new color scheme, and a multitude of improvements.[89]

On July 21, 2010, Reddit outsourced the Reddit search engine to Flaptor, who used its search product IndexTank.[90] As of July 12, 2012, Reddit uses Amazon CloudSearch.[91] There are several unofficial applications that use the Reddit API in the Google Play store, and F-Droid repository. Examples include: Reddit is Fun,[92] Andreddit,[93] F5, BaconReader,[94] Reddit Sync[95] and an Android tablet specific application called Reddita.[96] There are also several Windows apps used to access Reddit, including unofficial Reddit apps such as ReddHub[97] and Reddit To Go!.[98] An unofficial desktop application Reditr[99] exists that is compatible with Windows, OS X, Linux and ChromeOS.

There are several Reddit applications for iOS. These include Karma, Upvote, iReddit, iPad-specific applications such as Reddzine and Biscuit, and, until April 2016, Alien Blue.[100] In September 2014, an official mobile application for browsing AMA (Ask Me Anything) threads was released for the iOS and Android platforms under the name Ask me Anything.[101] In October 2014, Alien Blue was acquired by Reddit and became the official iOS Reddit app.[102] In April 2016, Reddit released an official application called Reddit: The Official App, which is available on Google Play and the iOS App Store, and Alien Blue was removed from the App Store in favor of the new app.[103]

Community and culture

The website is known for its open nature and diverse user community that generate its content.[104] Its demographics allows for wide-ranging subject areas, or main subreddits, that receive much attention, as well as the ability for smaller subreddits to serve more niche purposes. For example, the University of Reddit, a subreddit that exists to communally teach, emerged from the ability to enter and leave the online forum, the "classroom", at will, and classes ranging from computer science to music, to fine art theory exist.[105] The unique possibilities that subreddits provide create new opportunities for raising attention and fostering discussion across many areas. In gaining popularity in terms of unique users per day, Reddit has been a platform for many to raise publicity for a number of causes. And with that increased ability to garner attention and a large audience, users can use one of the largest communities on the Internet for new, revolutionary, and influential purposes.[106]

Statistics from Google Ad Planner suggest that 74% of Reddit users are male.[107] In 2016 the Pew Research Center published research showing that 4% of U.S. adults use reddit, of which 67% are men. 78% of users get news from Reddit.[108] Users tend to be significantly younger than average with less than 1% of users being 65 or over.[108]

Its popularity has enabled users to take unprecedented advantage of such a large community. Its innovative socially ranked rating and sorting system drives a method that is useful for fulfilling certain goals of viewership or simply finding answers to interesting questions. User sentiments about the website's function and structure include feelings about the breadth and depth of the discussions on Reddit and how the site makes it easy to discover new and interesting items. Almost all of the user reviews on Alexa.com, which rates Reddit's monthly unique traffic rating 125th in the United States, mention Reddit's "good content" as a likable quality. However, others raise the negative aspects of the potential for Reddit's communities to possess a "hive mind" of sorts,[109] embodying some negative aspects of group interaction theories like crowd psychology and collective consciousness.

Philanthropic efforts

Reddit has been known as the instigator of several charity projects, some short and others long-term, in order to benefit others. A selection of major events are outlined below:

  • In early October 2010, a story was posted on Reddit about a seven-year-old girl, Kathleen Edward, who was in the advanced stages of Huntington's disease. The girl's neighbors were taunting her and her family. Redditors banded together and gave the girl a shopping spree[110][111] at Tree Town Toys, a toy store local to the story owned by a Reddit user.
  • In early December 2010, members of the Christianity subreddit decided to hold a fundraiser[112] and later members of the atheism subreddit decided to give some friendly competition,[113] cross-promoting[114] fundraising drives for Doctors Without Borders and World Vision's Clean Water Fund, respectively. Later, the Islam subreddit joined in, raising money for Islamic Relief. In less than a week, the three communities (as well as the Reddit community at large) raised over $50,000.[115] Most of this was raised by the atheism subreddit, though the smaller Christianity subreddit had a higher average donation amount per subscriber.[116] A similar donation drive in 2011 saw the atheism subreddit raise over $200,000 for charity.[117]
  • Reddit started the largest Secret Santa program in the world, which is still in operation to date. For the 2010 Holiday season, 92 countries were involved in the Secret Santa program. There were 17,543 participants, and $662,907.60 was collectively spent on gift purchases and shipping costs.[118][119][120] In 2014, about 200,000 users from 188 countries participated.[121] Several celebrities have participated in the program, including Bill Gates[122] and Snoop Dogg.[123] Eventually, the Secret Santa program expanded to various other occasions through Redditgifts.
  • Members from Reddit donated over $600,000 to DonorsChoose in support of Stephen Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive. The donation spree broke previous records for the most money donated to a single cause by the Reddit community and resulted in an interview with Colbert on Reddit.[124]
  • Reddit users donated $185,356 to Direct Relief for Haiti after an earthquake devastated the nation in January 2010.[125]
  • Reddit users donated over $70,000 to the Faraja Orphanage in the first 24 hours to help secure the orphanage after intruders robbed and attacked one of the volunteers, who survived a strike to the head from a machete.[126]
  • In October 2012, "Shitty Watercolour", a popular Redditor known for posting watercolor paintings on the website,[127][128][129] streamed live a 12-hour painting session on YouTube to raise money for charity: water, a non-profit organization which aims to provide potable drinking water in developing countries. Redditors donated a minimum of $10 to have a photo of their choice painted in a 5 by 5 centimetres (2.0 by 2.0 in) square section of large sheets of paper.[130][131] The paint-a-thon raised $2,700.[132]
  • In February 2014, Reddit announced it would be donating 10% of its annual ad revenue to non-profits voted upon by its users.[133]
  • Reddit continued this policy for 2015, donating $82,765 each to Electronic Frontier Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Doctors Without Borders, Erowid Center, Wikimedia Foundation, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, NPR, Free Software Foundation, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Tor Project.[134]
  • In response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake, redditors raised more than $145,000 for Direct Relief and more than $110,000 for MAP International.[135]

Sociopolitical efforts

Reddit's model could be seen as to having sociopolitical aspects. It is built upon crowdsourcing, user generated content,[136] sharing, altruism,[136] gamification,[136] social reputation[136] and social relevance (opposed to monetary return), participation,[136] freedom of speech, openness, participatory[137] and/or self-governance, new forms of interaction (e.g. #IAmA and AMA) and collective intelligence. The site has been used for a wide variety of political purposes including the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Donald Trump.[138][139][140] It has also been used for self-organizing sociopolitical activism such as protests, communication with politicians and active communities. Reddit has become a prime location for people worldwide to openly discuss politics.[141]

March for Science

The March for Science originated from a discussion on reddit that informed about all references to climate change having been deleted from the White House website about which a user commented that "There needs to be a Scientists' March on Washington".[142][143][144]

Internet privacy, neutrality and anonymity

Many reddit users are highly engaged in the defense of Internet privacy, net neutrality and Internet anonymity. In advance of legislations that endanger these redditors typically set up pages to organize protest, create and curate content (e.g. media), call responsible authorities and inform about their issues and e.g. relevant tools and organizations.

On January 11, 2012, Reddit announced that it would be participating in a 12-hour sitewide blackout in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act.[74] The blackout occurred on January 18 and coincided with the blackouts of Wikipedia and several other websites. In May 2012, Reddit joined the Internet Defense League, a group formed to organize future protests.[145]

Cannabis legalization

A majority of the site's users seems to support legalization of marijuana.[citation needed]

The subreddit dedicated to cannabis culture /r/trees is most active in this regard and often organizes, coordinates or supports drug reform campaigns.[146][147][148][149]

In 2010, the site ran ads promoting marijuana legalization without charge after Conde Nast stated that they do not want to benefit financially from this particular issue.[150]

Commercial activity

In February 2013, Betabeat published a post that recognized the influx of multi-national corporations like Costco, Taco Bell, Subaru, and McDonald's posting branded content on Reddit that was made to appear as if it was original content from legitimate Reddit users.[151] Reddit's former Director of Communications noted that while a large number of Chief Marketing Officers want to "infiltrate the reddit community on behalf of their brand," she emphasized that "self-promotion is frowned upon" and the site is "100 percent organic."[152][153][154][155] She recommended that advertisers design promotions that "spark conversations and feedback."[156] She recommended that businesses use AMAs to get attention for public figures but cautioned "It is important to approach AMAs carefully and be aware that this may not be a fit for every project or client."[157] Nissan ran a successful Branded content promotion offering users free gifts to publicize a new car,[158][159] though the company was later ridiculed for suspected astroturfing when the CEO only answered puff piece questions on the site.[160][161] Taylor described these situations as "high risk" noting "We try hard to educate people that they have to treat questions that may seem irreverent or out of left field the same as they would questions about the specific project they are promoting."[162]

Reddit's users are more privacy-conscious than on other websites, using tools like AdBlock and proxies,[163] and they hate "feeling manipulated by brands" but respond well to "content that begs for intelligent viewers and participants."[164] Lauren Orsini writes in ReadWrite that "Reddit's huge community is the perfect hype machine for promoting a new movie, a product release, or a lagging political campaign" but "very specific set of etiquette. Redditors don't want to advertise for you, they want to talk to you."[165] Journalists have used the site as a basis for stories, though they are advised by the site's policies to respect that "reddit's communities belong to their members" and to seek proper attribution for people's contributions.[166]

Reddit announced that they would begin using VigLink to redirect affiliate links in June 2016.[167]

Reddit effect

Also known as the "Slashdot effect", the Reddit effect occurs when a smaller website has a high influx of traffic after being linked to on Reddit.[168] It is also called the "Reddit Hug of Death" among the website's users. Because Reddit is such a large site, the traffic is immense and can easily crash smaller sites. In order for users to see crashed websites, several Reddit bots have been created that take a snapshot of the website before large amounts of traffic flood the affected website.

"Restoring Truthiness" campaign

As a response to Glenn Beck's August 28, 2010, Restoring Honor rally (heavily promoted by him in his Fox News broadcasts during the summer), in September 2010 Reddit users started a movement to persuade satirist Stephen Colbert to have a counter-rally in Washington, D.C.[169] The movement, which came to be called "Restoring Truthiness", was started by user mrsammercer, in a post where he described waking up from a dream in which Stephen Colbert was holding a satirical rally in D.C.[170] He writes, "This would be the high water mark of American satire. Half a million people pretending to suspend all rational thought in unison. Perfect harmony. It'll feel like San Francisco in the late 60s, only we won't be able to get any acid."

The idea resonated with the Reddit community, which launched a campaign to bring the event to life. Over $600,000[171] was raised for charity to gain the attention of Colbert. The campaign was mentioned on-air several times, and when the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was held in Washington, D.C. on October 30, 2010, thousands of redditors made the journey.[172]

During a post-rally press conference, Reddit co-founder Ohanian asked, "What role did the Internet campaign play in convincing you to hold this rally?" Jon Stewart responded by saying that, though it was a very nice gesture, the two had already thought of the idea prior and the deposit on using the National Mall was already paid during the summer, so it acted mostly as a "validation of what we were thinking about attempting".[173] In a message to the Reddit community, Colbert later added, "I have no doubt that your efforts to organize and the joy you clearly brought to your part of the story contributed greatly to the turnout and success."[174]

Controversies

The website generally lets moderators on individual subreddits make editorial decisions about what content to allow, and has a history of permitting some subreddits dedicated to controversial content.[175] Many of the default pages are highly moderated, with the "science" subreddit banning climate change denialism,[176] and the "news" subreddit banning opinion pieces and columns.[177] Reddit has changed its site-wide editorial policies several times, sometimes in reaction to controversies.[178][179][180][181] Reddit has had a history of giving a platform to objectionable but legal content, and in 2011, news media covered the way that jailbait was being shared on the site before the site changed their policies to explicitly ban "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors".[182] Following some controversial incidents of Internet vigilantism, Reddit introduced a strict rule against the publication of non-public personally-identifying information via the site (colloquially known as doxxing). Those who break the rule are subject to a site-wide ban, and their posts and even entire communities may be removed for breaking the rule.

2010

On December 16, 2010, a redditor named Matt posted a link describing how he has donated a kidney, and included a JustGive link to encourage users to give donations to the American Cancer Society.[183] After an initially positive reaction, Reddit users began to become suspicious of Matt's intentions, and suggested that he was keeping the donations for himself. Users telephoned his home and he received death threats. Matt eventually proved that he was genuine by uploading his doctor's records.[184]

2011

On October 18, 2011, an IT manager submitted a post to the subreddit "gameswap" offering Redditors to trade one of 312 codes he had been given for the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.[185] A group of users obtained his personal details, and began to blackmail him for the codes.[186] The Monday after uploading the post, he received 138 threatening phone calls both at home and at his job, and by the end of the day he had been fired.[187]

2013

Following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Reddit faced criticism after users wrongly identified a number of people as suspects.[188] Notable among misidentified bombing suspects was Sunil Tripathi, a student reported missing before the bombings took place. A body reported to be Sunil's was found in Providence River in Rhode Island on April 25, 2013, according to Rhode Island Health Department. The cause of death was not immediately known, but authorities said they did not suspect foul play.[189] The family later confirmed Tripathi's death was a result of suicide.[190] Reddit general manager Martin later issued an apology for this behavior, criticizing the "online witch hunts and dangerous speculation" that took place on the website.[191] The incident was later referenced in the season 5 episode of the CBS TV series The Good Wife titled "Whack-a-Mole,"[192] as well as The Newsroom.[193][194]

In late October 2013, the moderators of the "politics" subreddit banned a large group of websites. Many were left-wing opinion websites, such as Mother Jones, The Huffington Post, Salon, Alternet, Rawstory, The Daily Kos, Truthout, Media Matters, and ThinkProgress as well as some popular progressive blog sites, such as Democratic Underground and Crooks and Liars. They also banned a number of right-wing sites—Drudge Report, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, Dailypaul, Power Line, and Reason. Salon reported that "the section's moderators explained in a post on Tuesday, the goal is 'to reduce the number of blogspam submissions and sensationalist titles.' The purge, the moderators explained, is also aimed at sites that provide lots of "bad journalism."[195] The December 2013 list of banned websites has been modified since late October, and sites with original content, such as Mother Jones and The Huffington Post, are allowed.[196] Moderators also banned RT, which moderators stated was due to vote manipulation and spam, though one moderator stated that he wanted RT banned because it is Kremlin backed.[197][198]

2014

In August 2014, photos from the 2014 celebrity photo hack were widely disseminated across the site.[199][200] A dedicated subreddit, "TheFappening," was created for this purpose,[201] and contained links to most if not all of the criminally obtained explicit images.[202][203][204][205][206] Some images of Liz Lee and McKayla Maroney from the leak were identified by redditors and outside commentators as child pornography because the photos were taken when the women were underage.[207] The subreddit was banned on September 6.[208] The scandal led to wider criticisms concerning the website's administration from The Verge and The Daily Dot.[209][210]

Also in August 2014, moderators and administrators removed a sizeable amount of content related to the Gamergate controversy; one thread in the "gaming" subreddit lost almost 24,000 comments.[211] This included the subreddit "ZoeQuinnDiscussion", which was banned for violating the Reddit rules.[212] Administrators attributed the bans to 4chan for raiding threads and causing harm, the accuracy of which was debated by some redditors.[213]

On December 18, 2014, Reddit took the unusual step of banning a subreddit, "SonyGOP," that was being used to distribute hacked Sony files.[214]

2015

After Ellen Pao became CEO, she was initially a target of criticism by users who objected to her lawsuit.[215] Later on June 10, 2015, Reddit shut down the 150,000-subscriber "fatpeoplehate" subreddit and four others citing issues related to harassment.[216] This move was seen as very controversial; some commenters said that the bans went too far, while others said that the bans did not go far enough.[217] One of the latter complaints concerned a subreddit that was "expressing support" for the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting.[218] Responding to the accusations of "skewed enforcement", Reddit reaffirmed their commitment to free expression and stated that "There are some subreddits with very little viewership that get highlighted repeatedly for their content, but those are a tiny fraction of the content on the site."

On July 2, 2015, Reddit began experiencing a series of blackouts as moderators set popular subreddit communities to private, in an event dubbed "AMAgeddon," a portmanteau of AMA ("ask me anything") and Armageddon. This was done in protest of the recent firing of Victoria Taylor, an administrator who helped organize citizen-led interviews with famous people on the popular "Ask me Anything" subreddit. Organizers of the blackout also expressed resentment about the recent severance of the communication between Reddit and the moderators of subreddits.[219] The blackout intensified on July 3 when former community manager David Croach gave an AMA about being fired. Before deleting his posts, he stated that Ellen Pao dismissed him with one year of health coverage when he had cancer and did not recover quickly enough.[220][221] Following this, a Change.org petition to remove Pao as CEO of Reddit Inc. reached over 200,000 signatures.[222][223][224] Pao posted a response on July 3 as well as an extended version of it on July 6 in which she apologized for bad communication and not delivering on promises. She also apologized on behalf of the other administrators and noted that problems already existed over the past several years.[225][226][227][228] On July 10, Pao resigned as CEO and was replaced by former CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman.[79][229]

In August 2015, Steve Huffman introduced a policy which led to the banning of several offensive and sexual communities. Included in the ban was lolicon which Huffman referred to as "animated CP".[230] Some subreddits had also been quarantined due to having "highly-offensive or upsetting content", such as /r/European, /r/swedenyes, /r/drawpeople, /r/kiketown, /r/blackfathers, /r/greatapes, and /r/whitesarecriminals.[231]

2016

In May 2016, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said on an interview at the TNW Conference that, unlike Facebook, which "only knows what [its users are] willing to declare publicly", Reddit knows its users' "dark secrets"[232][233][234] at the same time that the website's "values" page was updated in regards to its "privacy" section. The video reached the top of the website's main feed.[234][235] Shortly thereafter, announcements concerning new advertisement content drew criticism on the website.[236][237]

In September 2016, a Redditor named mormondocuments released thousands of administrative documents belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an action driven by the ex-Mormon and atheist communities of that site. Previously, on April 22 of that year, the same Redditor had announced his plans to do so. Church officials commented that the documents did not contain anything confidential.[238][239]

On November 23, 2016, Steve Huffman admitted to modifying the contents of many public user comments on Reddit that he disliked.[240][241] He did so by changing insulting comments made towards him and made it appear as if the insult were directed at the moderators of the /r/The Donald.[242]

On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post reported Reddit had banned the "Pizzagate" conspiracy board from their site stating it violated their policy of posting personal information of others, triggering a wave of criticism from users on /r/The_Donald, who felt the ban amounted to censorship.[243] The Reddit forum "Pizzagate" was devoted to a conspiracy theory derived from the John Podesta leaked emails, a theory that alleged the D.C. Pizzeria Comet Ping Pong "is at the center of a child-abuse ring tied to John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s former campaign manager".[244] After the forum was banned from Reddit, the wording "We don't want witchhunts on our site" now appears on the former page of the Pizzagate subreddit.[244][245]

On November 30, 2016 CEO Steve Huffman announced changes to the algorithm of their /r/all page to block 'stickied' posts from a number of subreddits, such as /r/The_Donald. In the announcement, the CEO also apologized for personally editing posts by users from /r/The_Donald, and declared intentions to take actions against "hundreds of the most toxic users" of Reddit and "communities whose users continually cross the line".[6][246][247]

2017

In February 2017, Reddit banned the alt-right forum for violating its terms of service, more specifically for attempting to share personal information about the man who attacked alt-right figure Richard B. Spencer.[248][249] The forum's users and moderators accused Reddit administrators of having political motivations for the ban.[250][251]

Other

Imgur is an online image sharing community and image host started in 2009 that was designed to be a gift to the online community of Reddit,[252] that jumped from a thousand hits per day to a million total page views in the first five months.[253]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Reddit on June23-05". Retrieved August 28, 2014. 
  2. ^ "Inside Reddit's Plan to Recover From Its Epic Meltdown". Retrieved January 17, 2017. 
  3. ^ "Reddit.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved July 3, 2017. 
  4. ^ a b steve [spez] (December 5, 2005). ""On lisp" blog post by Reddit founder "spez", detailing the reasons for switching to python from lisp". Blog.reddit.com. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  5. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions: What does the name "reddit" mean?". Reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  6. ^ a b Ohlheiser, Abby. "Reddit will limit the reach of a pro-Trump board and crack down on its ‘most toxic users’". Washington Post. Retrieved 1 December 2016. 
  7. ^ "Reddit.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved April 17, 2017. 
  8. ^ "Reddit in 2015". Reddit. December 30, 2015. Retrieved January 9, 2016. 
  9. ^ "myth: Condé Nast owns Reddit.". Reddit. August 6, 2013. Retrieved September 22, 2013. 
  10. ^ Alden, William (October 1, 2014). "With Reddit Deal, Snoop Dogg Moonlights as a Tech Investor". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved October 25, 2014. 
  11. ^ Cheredar, Tom (September 8, 2014). "Reddit reportedly raising $50M at a $500M valuation". Retrieved May 15, 2015. 
  12. ^ Kafka, Peter; Swisher, Kara (September 7, 2014). "Reddit Raising a Big Round, and Some Y Combinator Players Are in the Mix". Retrieved May 15, 2015. 
  13. ^ "Reddit Frequently Asked Questions". Retrieved April 10, 2014. 
  14. ^ a b By the Numbers: 60+ Amazing Reddit Statistics expandedramblings.com, Digital Tracking Blog, downloaded 10/23/2016.
  15. ^ a b "Browse the Future of Reddit: Re-Introducing Multireddits". June 7, 2013. Retrieved June 7, 2013. 
  16. ^ a b "Active" is defined as "subreddits that had at least 5 posts or comments in the past day", according to /u/chromakode who is an admin
  17. ^ Redditor - definition of Redditor Oxford Dictionaries Online
  18. ^ "Reddit algorithm". seomoz. 
  19. ^ "blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: What's Snoo?". 
  20. ^ Happy 10th birthday to us celebrating Reddit
  21. ^ "reddit.com/r/Wikipedia – The most interesting pages on Wikipedia". Reddit. November 24, 2012. Retrieved October 17, 2014. 
  22. ^ "Reddit Terms and Abbreviations". Moreadvertising.com. Retrieved December 11, 2013. 
  23. ^ "We've Got Mail!". Reddit. Retrieved December 11, 2013. 
  24. ^ powerlanguage (July 19, 2016). "Karma for text-posts (AKA self-posts) : announcements". Reddit. 
  25. ^ Feature story – December 10, 2007 (December 10, 2007). "Mister Splashy Pants the whale – you named him, now save him | Greenpeace International". Greenpeace.org. Retrieved August 8, 2014. 
  26. ^ "Enjoy your complimentary karma". Reddit. Retrieved August 8, 2014. 
  27. ^ "Reddit Worldwide Meetups". Reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  28. ^ "Reddit's new signup experience". May 31, 2017. Retrieved June 2, 2017. 
  29. ^ "Re: Can I make my own subreddit?". May 28, 2011. 
  30. ^ Atagana, Michelle (August 22, 2014). "Creating a more curious generation through memes: Q&A with Reddit GM". Memeburn.com. Retrieved September 11, 2014. 
  31. ^ Madrigal, Alexis C. (January 7, 2014). "'Ask Me Anything': How a Weird Internet Thing Became a New Form of Media". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 7, 2014. 
  32. ^ Horgan, Richard (July 3, 2013). "Meet Reddit's New Director of Communications". adweek.com. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved July 3, 2015. 
  33. ^ Fenn, Mike (June 24, 2013). "Reddit's newest employee used to type celebrities' AMA responses". dailydot.com. Retrieved July 3, 2015. 
  34. ^ "Victoria Taylor Tells PAN how Reddit Stays Genuine and What That Means for Marketers". prspeak.com. 
  35. ^ "President Obama makes online appearance on Reddit". The Telegraph. London. August 29, 2012. Retrieved August 30, 2012. 
  36. ^ Michelle Castillo (27 February 2017). "Bill Gates is 'concerned' about U.S. influence overseas and political divide online". CNBC. Gates participated in an "ask me anything" feature on Reddit that allows notable people to answer questions from users. This is the fifth time Gates has participated. 
  37. ^ Scott Bixby (28 July 2016). "From the media to moon landings: Trump takes questions in Reddit AMA". The Guardian. 
  38. ^ "top scoring links : IAmA". Reddit. Retrieved May 17, 2017. 
  39. ^ Alabaster, Jay (August 29, 2012). "Obama makes appearance on Reddit, briefly crashes site". IDG News Service. Retrieved August 30, 2012. 
  40. ^ "I'm Woody Harrelson, AMA". Reddit. 
  41. ^ Huff, Steve (February 4, 2012). "Woody Harrelson and the No-Good, Very Bad Reddit AMA". The Observer. Retrieved May 31, 2013. 
  42. ^ "I'm Priyanka Chopra, AMA". Reddit. 
  43. ^ "I'm Snoop Lion! Ask me anything!!". Reddit. 
  44. ^ Hernandez, Brian Anthony (December 11, 2012). "Snoop's Reddit AMA Is 2nd Biggest, Behind Only Obama's". Mashable. Retrieved May 31, 2013. 
  45. ^ Simpson, Connor (December 5, 2012). "How High Was Snoop Dogg During His Reddit AMA?". Atlantic Wire. Retrieved May 31, 2013. 
  46. ^ "I am Peter Dinklage. You probably know me as Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. AMA!". Reddit. Retrieved April 29, 2015. 
  47. ^ "This feels like being interviewed by a hundred thousand news anchors at once!". Reddit. 
  48. ^ "Why was /r/IAmA, along with a number of other large subreddits, made private? : OutOfTheLoop". reddit. 
  49. ^ McCormick, Rich. "Huge chunks of Reddit are locked after AMA coordinator fired". Retrieved July 3, 2015. 
  50. ^ Hern, Alex. "Reddit revolts: subforums shut down in protest over AMA co-ordinator sacking". the Guardian. Retrieved July 3, 2015. 
  51. ^ "Reddit in uproar after staff sacking". BBC News. July 3, 2015. Retrieved July 3, 2015. 
  52. ^ Feinberg, Ashley (July 8, 2015). "Fired Reddit Administrator Victoria Taylor Finally Breaks Her Silence". Gawker. Retrieved July 12, 2015. [permanent dead link]
  53. ^ Holiday, Ryan (July 6, 2015). "I'll Miss Working With reddit's Victoria Taylor". The Observer. Retrieved July 12, 2015. 
  54. ^ Lee, Timothy (April 14, 2015). "The button: the fascinating social experiment driving Reddit crazy". Vox. Vox Media. Retrieved April 24, 2015. 
  55. ^ powerlanguage (June 8, 2015). "The button has ended". Reddit. 
  56. ^ Reddit's 'Robin' is a brilliant social experiment that pits millions of internet users against each other Business Insider April 1, 2016
  57. ^ "Reddit's new 'Place' is forcing millions of users to work together to make something great". Business Insider. Retrieved 1 April 2017. 
  58. ^ "Place has ended". Reddit. Retrieved 3 April 2017. 
  59. ^ Macale, Sherilynn "Cheri". "A rundown of Reddit's history and community [Infographic]". The Next Web Social Media. Retrieved November 12, 2011. 
  60. ^ Adams, Richard (December 8, 2005). "reddit.com". London: The Guardian. Retrieved December 23, 2006. 
  61. ^ Singel, Ryan (July 19, 2011). "Feds Charge Activist as Hacker for Downloading Millions of Academic Articles". Wired. Retrieved January 12, 2013. 
  62. ^ Swartz, Aaron (February 27, 2006). "Introducing Infogami". Infogami. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008. Retrieved January 6, 2007.  (archive.org link)
  63. ^ Arrington, Michael (October 31, 2006). "Breaking news: Condé Nast/Wired Acquires Reddit". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 6, 2007. 
  64. ^ "A Chat with Aaron Swartz". Blogoscoped.com. May 7, 2007. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  65. ^ alexis [kn0thing] (March 20, 2007). "welcome, jedberg". blog.reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  66. ^ alexis [kn0thing] (April 17, 2008). "welcome, david". blog.reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  67. ^ alexis [kn0thing] (December 9, 2008). "Welcome, Mike Schiraldi (a.k.a. raldi)". blog.reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  68. ^ Kincaid, Jason (November 1, 2010). "Reddit Chief Takes Flight To Hipmunk, Explains Why He's Leaving Now". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  69. ^ "Welcome, Ketralnis!". Blog.hipmunk.com. March 12, 2011. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  70. ^ "Lead411 launches "Hottest Companies in San Francisco" awards". Lead411.com. May 18, 2010. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  71. ^ mike [raldi] (July 19, 2010). "What's new on Reddit: Three new features for Reddit gold: Choose-your-own ads, Userpage sorting, and Friends with Benefits". blog.reddit. Retrieved July 29, 2010. It's time for Reddit gold to make the shift from a one-week experiment to a true service with a clear pricing structure and at least a few whistles and bells. 
  72. ^ "reddit.com: gold". Retrieved July 20, 2013. 
  73. ^ "blog.reddit – what's new online: Independence". Retrieved September 6, 2011. 
  74. ^ a b "Reddit Plans SOPA 'Blackout' Protest Jan. 18". Entertainment Consumers Association. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  75. ^ "The Internet Defense League - Protecting the Free Internet since 2012". internetdefenseleague.org. 
  76. ^ Olanoff, Drew. "Reddit Starts Accepting Bitcoin for Reddit Gold Purchases Thanks To Partnership With Coinbase". Techcrunch. Retrieved February 14, 2013. 
  77. ^ "Reddit Gets Into Crowdfunding With Redditmade". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 29, 2014. 
  78. ^ "Reddit CEO Wong resigns, co-founder Ohanian to return". Investing.com. Retrieved November 13, 2014. 
  79. ^ a b "An old team at reddit • /r/announcements". reddit. Retrieved July 10, 2015. 
  80. ^ Issac, Mike (July 10, 2015). "Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit's Chief". New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2015. 
  81. ^ "Introducing Upvoted: A Redditorial Publication". redditblog.com. 
  82. ^ "Reddit Launches New Block Tools To Help Temper Harassment". 
  83. ^ "Official web.py site". Webpy.org. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  84. ^ steve [spez] (June 17, 2008). "Reddit goes open source". Blog.reddit.com. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  85. ^ "Reddit GitHub". Retrieved June 5, 2011. 
  86. ^ Sites Using Pylons – Pylons Community – PythonWeb
  87. ^ jeremy [jedberg] (November 10, 2009). "Moving to the cloud". Blog.reddit.com. Archived from the original on April 10, 2016. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  88. ^ What's new on Reddit: Reddit now powered by jQuery – Posted by Chris Slowe (keysersosa) (Friday, January 30, 2009) – blog.reddit
  89. ^ "A better mobile Reddit for all". Reddit. June 9, 2010. Retrieved July 29, 2010. 
  90. ^ "Reddit Blog post announcing the use of IndexTank search engine". 
  91. ^ "Does Reddit using Amazon Cloud Search?". July 17, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2013. 
  92. ^ "Reddit is fun – Android Application on the Android market". Appbrain.com. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  93. ^ "Download andreddit for your Android phone on AppBrain". Appbrain.com. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  94. ^ "A tasty new Reddit app". baconreader. Retrieved July 6, 2011. 
  95. ^ Sync apps. "Reddit Sync – Android Apps on Google Play". Google Inc. Archived from the original on June 9, 2013. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  96. ^ "Reddita – Android Market". Market.android.com. November 15, 2011. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  97. ^ "Windows Store – Reddit on ReddHub". Reddit Anonymous. Retrieved March 24, 2013. 
  98. ^ "Reddit To Go! app for Windows in the Windows Store". ross456. Retrieved August 6, 2013. 
  99. ^ Pot, Justin. "Reditr: A Desktop Client For Reddit With Embedded Content". MakeUseOf. Retrieved October 9, 2013. 
  100. ^ Joshua Lockhart On 2 (May 26, 2013). "The 5 Best Free Reddit Apps for iOS". Makeuseof.com. Retrieved December 3, 2013. 
  101. ^ "Announcing the official reddit AMA app". 
  102. ^ Kumparak, Greg (October 15, 2014). "Reddit Acquires Alien Blue, The Most Popular Unofficial Reddit App". TechCrunch. AOL. Retrieved October 25, 2014. 
  103. ^ Reddit scraps Alien Blue in favor of in-house built iOS and Android apps April 2016
  104. ^ AMA how a weird internet thing became a mainstream delight The Atlantic January 2014
  105. ^ "The University of Reddit". UReddit. Retrieved December 11, 2013. 
  106. ^ "Could Reddit be the world's most influential website?". BlueGlass. Retrieved April 26, 2012. 
  107. ^ "Social Media By Gender: Women Dominate Pinterest, Twitter, Men Dominate Reddit, YouTube (INFOGRAPHIC)". June 21, 2012. Retrieved April 17, 2017 – via Huff Post. 
  108. ^ a b Barthel, Michael; Stoking, Galen; Holcomb, Jesse; Mitchell, Amy (February 25, 2016). "Seven-in-Ten Reddit Users Get News on the Site". Pew Research Center. Retrieved May 28, 2017. While just 4% of U.S. adults report using Reddit, about seven-in-ten of these users (78%) get news on the site. 
  109. ^ "Reddit.com Site Info". Alexa.com. Retrieved April 26, 2012. 
  110. ^ "Toy Store Shopping Spree for Kathleen Edward". Myfoxdetroit.com. October 12, 2010. Archived from the original on March 8, 2012. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  111. ^ Stryker, Cole (December 10, 2010). Kathleen Edward, Harassed Girl with Huntington's Diseas, Thanks Reddit. Urlesque. Retrieved April 20, 2011.
  112. ^ "If every member of r/Christianity donates just $4.45, we can build a health clinic in an impoverished area that desperately needs one. Let's do it!". December 9, 2010. 
  113. ^ "OK, Battle stations everybody. Tonight we show r/Christianity what we are made of...". December 9, 2010. 
  114. ^ "Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! r/atheism and r/Christianity have a friendly competition up for a holiday charity drive that is spilling over into other subreddi". Reddit. December 10, 2010. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  115. ^ Miles, Tom (December 12, 2011). "Irreverent atheists crowdsource charitable giving". Reuters. Retrieved June 18, 2013. 
  116. ^ Levy, Piet (December 16, 2010). "Christians and Atheists Square Off In Online Battle To Raise Money For Charity". Huffington Post. Retrieved June 18, 2013. 
  117. ^ Winston, Kimberly (December 21, 2011). "Atheists aim to change image of penny-pinching Scrooges". USA Today. Retrieved June 18, 2013. 
  118. ^ Boitnott, John (December 23, 2010). "Secret Santa success caps banner year for Reddit". VentureBeat Interpreting Innovation. VentureBeat. Retrieved January 3, 2011. 
  119. ^ "The Biggest Secret Santa Gift Exchange in the World". Retrieved February 12, 2011. 
  120. ^ "Statistics for Secret Santa 2010". Retrieved February 12, 2011. 
  121. ^ "Nearly 1,000 Reddit Ottawa users signed up for gift exchange". CBC News. December 19, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2014. 
  122. ^ McCluskey, Megan (December 17, 2015). "Bill Gates Gave One Reddit User an Amazingly Thoughtful Secret Santa Gift". Retrieved April 27, 2016. 
  123. ^ Ballingall, Alex (December 22, 2014). "Web community's holiday gift exchange has more than 212,000 participants this year, including celebrities and people from 188 countries". Retrieved April 27, 2016. 
  124. ^ "Restoring Truthiness Giving Page". Donorschoose.org. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  125. ^ "Direct Relief International: Support Us – Tributes:". Dri.convio.net. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  126. ^ "How Reddit Saved an Orphanage". Reddit. January 27, 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2012. 
  127. ^ Watercutter, Angela (June 12, 2012). "Reddit's (Best) Worst Painter Turns Comment Threads Into Art". Wired. Retrieved June 9, 2013. 
  128. ^ Alfonso III, Fernando (February 21, 2012). "He turns posts into paintings on Reddit". The Daily Dot. Retrieved June 9, 2013. 
  129. ^ "40 Really Bad Watercolor Interpretations Of Photos On Reddit". BuzzFeed. April 26, 2012. Retrieved June 9, 2013. 
  130. ^ Hickey, Walter; Lubin, Gus (March 13, 2012). "Meet The Redditors Who Rule The Internet". Business Insider. Retrieved June 9, 2013. 
  131. ^ Alfonso III, Fernando (October 4, 2012). "Reddit's shitty_watercolour launches charity paint-a-thon". The Daily Dot. Retrieved June 9, 2013. 
  132. ^ "Watercolour Fundraising". JustGiving. Retrieved June 19, 2013. 
  133. ^ "Decimating Our Ads Revenue". February 8, 2014. Retrieved April 30, 2015. 
  134. ^ "Announcing the winners of Reddit Donate!". February 26, 2015. Retrieved April 30, 2015. 
  135. ^ "An update on what the reddit community has done so far to help Nepal - and what's still needed.". redditblog.com. May 12, 2015. Retrieved April 8, 2016. 
  136. ^ a b c d e "Karma whoring reddit and the frontpage's econometrization" (PDF). Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  137. ^ "Occupy and Academia: Investigating a Socio-Political Laboratory" (PDF). Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  138. ^ Lagorio-chafkin, Christine (19 November 2016). "Reddit and the God Emperor of the Internet". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  139. ^ Kanalley, Craig (29 August 2012). "Barack Obama Reddit AMA: President Participates In 'Ask Me Anything' Thread". Huffington Post. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  140. ^ "How Obama Won The Internet". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  141. ^ "The Surprising Ways You Ruined Your Interview Before You Even Opened Your Mouth". Fast Company. 21 April 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  142. ^ "The March for Science began with this person’s ‘throwaway line’ on Reddit". Washington Post. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  143. ^ "Are scientists going to march on Washington?". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 31, 2017. 
  144. ^ Foley, Katherine Ellen. "The global March for Science started with a single Reddit thread". Quartz. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  145. ^ "The Internet Defense League - Protecting the Free Internet since 2012". internetdefenseleague.org. 
  146. ^ "Reddit Joins the Marijuana Majority!". 14 July 2014. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  147. ^ "/r/Trees search results". www.reddit.com. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  148. ^ "Legal kiffen? Befürworter lancieren neue Initiative" (in German). Basler Zeitung. 22 April 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  149. ^ "U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer Fields Questions From Stoners On Reddit:". Willamette Week. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  150. ^ "In protest, Reddit rolls its own pot ads". CNET. Retrieved 23 April 2017. 
  151. ^ Holiday, Ryan (February 21, 2013). "Hail Corporate: The Increasingly Insufferable Fakery of Brands on Reddit". Betabeat. Archived from the original on December 30, 2014. 
  152. ^ "Victoria Taylor Tells PAN how Reddit Stays Genuine and What That Means for Marketers". PAN communications. May 21, 2014. 
  153. ^ "On Reddit, Unlike Other Social Sites, It's About the Topic, Not the Brand". PR News. October 28, 2013. Brands that are mentioned on the site are in a casual context, similar to being in a local bar or coffee shop, rather than a mall, which is much more of a commercial space 
  154. ^ "To Learn About reddit, Listen First". September 3, 2014. Victoria Taylor, director of communications at reddit, said the point of posting to reddit is not to have content go viral; it is to build credibility 
  155. ^ "Social Media and Journalism: An Intrinsically Linked Organism". Brandwatch. May 20, 2014. The communities on Reddit don't want to feel used or exploited. That's where listening comes in. 
  156. ^ "The Real Low-Down From Reddit". Tech Affect. October 22, 2014. 
  157. ^ Carrie Fung (September 13, 2013). "When the Narwhal Bacons and Why it Matters to PR Pros". EngagePR blog. 
  158. ^ "Nissan Buys Gifts for Redditors – and Some Love for Itself". Digday. November 21, 2013. Victoria Taylor, reddit's director of communications, told Digiday that Nissan's reddit adventure was one of the best campaigns the site has seen in a long time. "The community really responded well to the two community managers" 
  159. ^ "Cheatsheet: How brands can win reddit". Digday. February 3, 2014. "Going into it, we are honest with advertisers that redditors are opinionated," said Victoria Taylor, reddit's director of communications. "Anywhere you have opinions, people are going to have a dialog and disagree." Advertisers have to be willing to engage honestly — and cleverly — with the reddit community to win their trust. 
  160. ^ "Nissan, Reddit defend authenticity of questions in Ghosn AMA". PR Week. January 14, 2015. While Taylor said it's a positive that users demand authenticity, transparency, and accountability on Reddit, she noted that "it's unfortunate that people tend to try to look for negative examples." She admitted that the AMA with Nissan was not the most successful edition the platform has had... Reddit, she said, will always be "open and transparent if something doesn't seem genuine." 
  161. ^ "Walking a fine line as a communicator on Reddit". Muck Rack. March 3, 2015. 
  162. ^ "Reddit AMAs: A minefield worth crossing". PR Week. April 4, 2014. 
  163. ^ Nicole Spector (June 18, 2014). "Reddit's Safe Play in the Game of Geo-Targeting". 
  164. ^ Megan Haynes (June 5, 2014). "Reddit knows: new study reveals what Canadians want". StrategyOnline.ca. 
  165. ^ "Let your audience ask you anything". ReadWrite. September 24, 2014. 
  166. ^ "Reddit - the front page of the internet: New user behaviour and social media trends". BBC Academy: Journalism. BBC via YouTube. November 7, 2013. 
  167. ^ "Affiliate links on Reddit". 
  168. ^ abc blog (August 31, 2012). "The Reddit effect". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Archived from the original on November 1, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2013. 
  169. ^ Friedman, Megan (September 14, 2010). "Reddit Campaign for Colbert Rally Breaks Donation Record". Time NewsFeed. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  170. ^ mrsammercer (August 31, 2010). "I've had a vision and I can't shake it: Colbert needs to hold a satirical rally in DC". Reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  171. ^ "Restoring Truthiness donor page". Donorschoose.org. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  172. ^ Schiraldi, Mike (November 12, 2010). "Buy Shirts, Remember the Rally, Question Colbert, and Smile". blog.reddit. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  173. ^ Rally to Restore Sanity – Press Conference – Video Mediaite. October 30, 2010.
  174. ^ "Stephen Colbert has answered your questions : IAmA". Reddit. November 30, 2010. Retrieved December 4, 2011. 
  175. ^ "Rules of Reddit". Retrieved October 14, 2012. 
  176. ^ "Critics blast Reddit over climate-change skeptic ban". Fox News. December 19, 2013. Reddit's director of communications told FoxNews.com that while it was Allen's prerogative to ban climate-change skeptics from "/r/science", his statements "do not reflect the views of Reddit as a whole, or other science or climate-oriented subreddits. Each subreddit community is entitled to its own views, and anyone who wants to start their own subreddit is welcome to do so devoted to their views, opinions or interests" 
  177. ^ Sam Kirkland (November 25, 2014). "How to get your news site banned from Reddit". Poynter. If you don't like how a moderator is managing a subreddit, the best solution is to start your own subreddit and moderate it with different rules, said Victoria Taylor, director of communications for Reddit. 
  178. ^ "blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: reddit, we need to talk...". redditblog.com. 
  179. ^ "A necessary change in policy : blog". reddit. 
  180. ^ "Image from Yishan Wong". imgur.com. Retrieved April 17, 2017. 
  181. ^ Rob Price. "Reddit's old CEO rewrites the history of Reddit and says 'the purge' of users will begin". Business Insider Australia. 
  182. ^ Morris, Kevin (February 12, 2012). "Reddit bans "suggestive or sexual content" of minors". The Daily Dot. Retrieved June 12, 2014. 
  183. ^ BadgerMatt (December 16, 2010). "My story as an anonymous kidney donor and my plea for your help". Reddit. Archived from the original on December 20, 2010. Retrieved July 14, 2014. 
  184. ^ Coscarelli, Joe (December 19, 2010). "The Dangers of Going Viral: Kidney Donor Attacked by Reddit For Plugging Charity". The Village Voice. Voice Media. Archived from the original on December 22, 2010. Retrieved July 14, 2010. 
  185. ^ nyan_all_the_links (July 15, 2014). "[H] Deus Ex: Human Revolution (300+ copies) [Steam], [W] Any and all steam offers". Reddit. Archived from the original on October 28, 2011. Retrieved July 15, 2014. 
  186. ^ Morris, Kevin (October 28, 2011). "A sweet deal on Reddit gets IT exec fired". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on July 15, 2014. Retrieved July 14, 2014. 
  187. ^ Morris, Kevin (October 29, 2011). "Game swap leads to harassment, firing, apology". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on July 15, 2014. Retrieved July 14, 2014. 
  188. ^ "Innocents accused in online manhunt". 3 News NZ. April 22, 2013. 
  189. ^ Buncombe, Andrew (April 26, 2013). "Family of Sunil Tripathi - missing student wrongly linked to Boston marathon bombing - thank well-wishers for messages of support". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on January 17, 2015. Retrieved January 17, 2015. The cause of the student's death has still be determined but the medical examiner said no foul play was suspected. 
  190. ^ Nark, Jason. "The Boston bombing's forgotten victim". Philadelphia Daily News. Archived from the original on October 31, 2014. Retrieved October 31, 2014. Akhil spent the most time with Sunny before his suicide, weekends at Brown where he tried to help his youngest child foresee a future. 
  191. ^ Martin, Erik. "Reflections on the Recent Boston Crisis". Reddit. Retrieved May 3, 2013. 
  192. ^ Harnick, Chris (November 24, 2013). "'The Good Wife' Recap: Alicia Takes on Anonymous Posters in 'Whack-A-Mole'". The Huffington Post. Retrieved November 25, 2013. 
  193. ^ Hathaway, Jay (November 11, 2014). "Here's How The Newsroom Covered Reddit's Failed Boston Bombing Manhunt". Archived from the original on June 30, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015. 
  194. ^ Fallon, Kevin. "'Newsroom' Premiere: Aaron Sorkin Puts CNN on Blast Over the Boston Bombing". Retrieved June 27, 2015. 
  195. ^ Oremus, Will (November 1, 2013). "Reddit politics: r/politics mods ban Mother Jones, others for "bad journalism."". Slate. Retrieved December 3, 2013. 
  196. ^ "filtereddomains – politics". Reddit. Retrieved August 8, 2014. 
  197. ^ "Reddit's r/news bans RT.com for alleged spamming". The Daily Dot. Retrieved December 26, 2014. 
  198. ^ "Reddit moderator pushed for RT ban 'simply because it's Kremlin'". Retrieved December 26, 2014. 
  199. ^ "Say hello to men who hate NSA spying but blame women for being spied on". The Verge. September 1, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  200. ^ Vincent, James (September 1, 2014). "Is Apple's iCloud safe after leak of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities' nude photos?". The Independent. London. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  201. ^ "Celebrity Naked Photos Leaked – #theFappening – So You Have A Girlfriend". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  202. ^ "The Fappening Is Being Broadcast Live On Reddit With 100,000+ Viewers". Business 2 Community. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  203. ^ Anthony Johnston, Metro World News (October 10, 2014). "Security expert weighs in on 'The Fappening' and the iCloud". Metro. Retrieved December 26, 2014. 
  204. ^ "Man who leaked celebrity nude photos admits he is running from authorities". Daily Mail. London. September 1, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  205. ^ "Hunt begins for hacker behind Jennifer Lawrence nude photo theft". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  206. ^ "Jennifer Lawrence nude photos leaked: Hacker posts explicit pics". NewsComAu. September 3, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014. 
  207. ^ Price, Rob. "There's child porn in the massive celebrity nudes hack". The Daily Dot. Retrieved September 2, 2014. 
  208. ^ Geller, Eric. "Reddit just banned the subreddit at the center of Celebgate". The Daily Dot. Retrieved September 8, 2014. 
  209. ^ Sottek, T.C. (September 8, 2014). "Reddit is a failed state". The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved November 2, 2014. 
  210. ^ Sankin, Aaron. "Is Reddit broken beyond repair?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved November 2, 2014. 
  211. ^ "TotalBiscuit discusses the state of games journalism, Steam Greenlight, ethics, DMCA abuse and Depression Quest. : gaming". reddit. 
  212. ^ "ZoeQuinnDiscussion: banned". Reddit. Retrieved February 9, 2016. 
  213. ^ "cupcake1713 comments on Latest Zoe Quinn drama explodes. SpiritualSuccessors takes on the job of undertaker and ferryman across the styx to /r/Shadowban.". reddit. 
  214. ^ Goldman, David (December 29, 2014). "Reddit takes down Sony hack forum". CNN. Retrieved January 4, 2015. 
  215. ^ Celarier, Michelle (March 18, 2015). "Users lash out at Reddit boss for 'deleting' posts on hubby's lawsuit". New York Post. Retrieved June 27, 2015. 
  216. ^ "Reddit could be on the brink of collapse". The Independent. 2015-06-11. Retrieved 2017-02-08. 
  217. ^ Woollacott, Emma. "Users Flock To Voat As Reddit Shuts Harassing Groups". Forbes. Retrieved June 11, 2015. 
  218. ^ "What should social networks do about hate speech? - BBC News". BBC News. Retrieved July 2, 2015. 
  219. ^ "Reddit in uproar after staff sacking". BBC News. BBC. July 3, 2015. Retrieved July 3, 2015. About 100 chat sections, or sub-reddits, that together have millions of readers are believed to have been shut. Reddit's only comment about the issue has been to say that it did not talk about 'individual employee matters'. The protests were led by the volunteer moderators of the AMA section, which said in an explanatory posting that they needed Ms Taylor to keep the sub-reddit functioning. Ms Taylor helped organise guests for AMAs and worked to verify that people due to answer questions were who they said they were. There had been no explanation of why she was suddenly sacked, said the administrators. 
  220. ^ "Reddit: Laute Rufe nach Absetzung von CEO Ellen Pao". July 4, 2015. Retrieved July 5, 2015. Zwar sind einige Foren wieder entsperrt, trotzdem ist Pao weiterhin Ziel vielerlei Angriffe. Zusätzliches Öl ins Feuer goss ein ehemaliger Community Manager der Online-Community, der angab von der Reddit-Chefin aufgrund seiner Krebserkrankung gefeuert worden zu sein. Zuvor wurde dem an Leukämie erkrankten Mitarbeiter eingeräumt, beim Unternehmen zu verbleiben – allerdings meldete sich Pao nur wenig später und gab ihm zu wissen, dass er aufgrund seiner Erkrankung nicht mehr bei Reddit verbleiben könnte. So zumindest die Behauptung, die wenig später offline ging. 
  221. ^ "Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired an Employee For Having Cancer and Not Recovering Fast Enough". Retrieved July 5, 2015. 
  222. ^ McGregor, Jena (July 6, 2015). "More than 200k people have signed a petition calling for Reddit's Ellen Pao to step down". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 7, 2015. 
  223. ^ Musil, Steven (July 5, 2015). "Petition for Pao resignation from Reddit grows to 130K". Cnet. Retrieved July 5, 2015. 
  224. ^ Malik, Naureen; Jones, Tim (July 5, 2015). "Reddit CEO Pao Under Fire as Users Protest Removal of Executive". Bloomberg. Retrieved July 5, 2015. 
  225. ^ Reddit CEO Ellen Pao apologizes: 'We screwed up' By Laurie Segall and Chris Isidore CNN.com July 6, 2015
  226. ^ Reddit CEO Ellen Pao Issues an Apology for the Direction of the Site by Laura Entis FoxNews.com July 6, 2015
  227. ^ Jack Linshi (July 6, 2015). "Ellen Pao: Reddit CEO Apologizes After Petition for Her to Resign". TIME.com. 
  228. ^ Titcomb, James (July 7, 2015). "Petition calling for Reddit boss Ellen Pao to resign hits 200,000 as she admits 'we screwed up'". London: The Telegraph. Retrieved July 7, 2015. 
  229. ^ Mike, Isaac (July 10, 2015). "Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit's Chief". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved July 10, 2015. 
  230. ^ Weinberger, Matt (2015-08-05). "Reddit finally bans its most infamous racist communities because they 'made recruiting here more difficult'". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-08-09. 
  231. ^ "Quarantined Subreddits". Reddit Help. Retrieved June 21, 2016. 
  232. ^ Boris van Zanten (30 May 2016). "Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: ‘We know your dark secrets. We know everything.’". The Next Web (TNW). 
  233. ^ Jessica Haworth (30 May 2016). "Reddit CEO tells users 'we know your dark secrets' as he strikes fear into web surfers". Mirror. 
  234. ^ a b "Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says, "We know your dark secrets"". Daily News and Analysis. 31 May 2016. 
  235. ^ "CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, about advertising on Reddit: "We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook - we know your dark secrets, we know everything" (TNW Conference, 26 May) (27,500 votes)". Reddit. 29 May 2016. 
  236. ^ "New Ad Type: Promoted User Posts". Reddit (official announcement). 26 July 2016. 
  237. ^ "Sponsored headline tests: placement and design". Reddit (official announcement). 
  238. ^ Roth, Max (September 22, 2016). "Allegedly secret LDS Church documents leaked". Fox 13 Now. Fox 13 Salt Lake. Retrieved September 30, 2016. 
  239. ^ Wenzke, Marissa (September 26, 2016). "Inside the online world of ex-Mormons". Mashable. Mashable. Retrieved September 30, 2016. 
  240. ^ Yeung, Ken. "Reddit CEO apologizes for editing comments critical of him following Pizzagate ban". VentureBeat. Retrieved 24 November 2016. 
  241. ^ Russell, Jon. "Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters". Techcrunch. Retrieved 24 November 2016. 
  242. ^ Weingerger, Matt. "The CEO of Reddit confessed to modifying posts from Trump supporters after they wouldn't stop sending him expletives". Business Insider. Retrieved 24 November 2016. 
  243. ^ Ohlheiser, Abby (November 24, 2016). "Fearing yet another witch hunt, Reddit bans ‘Pizzagate’". Washington Post. Retrieved November 24, 2016. 
  244. ^ a b Blake, Andrew (November 25, 2016). "Reddit CEO admits editing posts, directing obscene comments to pro-Trump administrators". Washington Times. Retrieved November 25, 2016. 
  245. ^ "Pizzagate subreddit webpage". Reddit. November 23, 2016. Retrieved November 25, 2016. 
  246. ^ Huffman, Steve (November 30, 2016). "TIFU by editing some comments and creating an unnecessary controversy.". Reddit. Retrieved November 30, 2016. 
  247. ^ "Reddit moves against ’toxic' Trump fans". BBC News. Retrieved 1 December 2016. 
  248. ^ "Reddit shuts down 'alt-right' subreddit". CNET. Retrieved 2017-02-15. 
  249. ^ Resnick, Gideon (2017-02-02). "Reddit Bans Alt-Right Group". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2017-02-15. 
  250. ^ "Reddit bans a major alt-right community — and there may be a very good reason". Business Insider. 
  251. ^ Hern, Alex (2017-02-02). "Reddit bans far-right groups altright and alternativeright". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-02-15. 
  252. ^ Schaaf, Alan (February 23, 2009). "My Gift to Reddit: I created an image hosting service that doesn't suck. What do you think?". Reddit. Retrieved April 9, 2013. 
  253. ^ "Interview: Imgur's Path to a Billion Image Views Per Day - Liz Gannes - Social - AllThingsD". AllThingsD. 

External links