Reddit

Registering an account with Reddit is free and does not require an email address.[28][29] In addition to commenting and voting, registered users can also create their own subreddit on a topic of their choosing.[30] In Reddit style, usernames begin with "u/". For example, noteworthy redditors include u/Poem_for_your_sprog, who responds to messages across Reddit in verse,[31] u/Shitty_Watercolour who posts paintings in response to posts,[32] u/gallowboob, with the highest karma on reddit,[33] and u/spez, the CEO of Reddit (Steve Huffman).

Subreddits are overseen by moderators, Reddit users who earn the title by creating a subreddit or being promoted by a current moderator.[22] These moderators are volunteers who manage their communities, set and enforce community-specific rules, remove posts and comments that violate these rules, and generally work to keep discussions in their subreddit on topic.[22][34][35] Admins, by contrast, are paid to work for Reddit.[34]

Subreddits are user-created areas of interest where discussions on Reddit are organized. There are about 138,000 active subreddits (among a total of 1.2 million) as of July 2018.[36][37] Subreddit names begin with "r/"; for instance, "r/science" is a community devoted to discussing scientific topics, while "r/television" is a community devoted to discussing TV shows. Meanwhile, "r/popular" features top-ranked posts across all of Reddit, excluding NSFW communities and others that are most commonly filtered out by users (even if they are safe for work).[24][25] The subreddit "r/all" does not filter topics and shows posts across all subreddits.[26]

In a 2014 interview with Memeburn, Erik Martin, then general manager of Reddit, remarked that their "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".[38] Subreddits often use themed variants of Reddit's alien mascot, Snoo, in the visual styling of their communities.[39]

Reddit Premium (formerly Reddit Gold) is a premium membership that allows users to view the site ad-free.[40][41] Users may also be gifted coins if another user particularly valued the comment or post, generally due to humorous or high-quality content. Reddit Premium unlocks several features not accessible to regular users, such as comment highlighting, exclusive subreddits, and a personalized Snoo (known as a "snoovatar").[42][43] Reddit Gold was renamed Reddit Premium in 2018. In addition to gold coins, users can gift silver and platinum coins to other users as rewards for quality content.[44]

On the site, redditors commemorate their "cake day" once a year, on the anniversary of the day their account was created.[45] Cake day adds an icon of a small slice of cake next to the user's name for 24 hours.[46]

In 2017, Reddit developed its own real-time chat software for the site.[47] While some established subreddits have used third-party software to chat about their communities, the company built chat functions that it hopes will become an integral part of Reddit.[47] Individual chat rooms were rolled out in 2017 and community chat rooms for members of a given subreddit were rolled out in 2018.[47][48][49]

In 2019, Reddit tested a new feature which allowed users to tip others. It was only made available for a user named Chris who goes by the alias u/shittymorph, who was known for posting well-written comments, only for them to end with the same copypasta referencing the 1998 Hell in a Cell match between wrestlers The Undertaker and Mankind.[50][51]

Co-founder Alexis Ohanian speaking in 2009

The idea and initial development of Reddit originated with then college roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Huffman and Ohanian attended a lecture by programmer-entrepreneur Paul Graham in Boston, Massachusetts, during their spring break from University of Virginia.[52][53][54] After speaking with Huffman and Ohanian following the lecture, Graham invited the two to apply to his startup incubator Y Combinator.[52] Their initial idea, My Mobile Menu, was unsuccessful,[55][56] and was intended to allow users to order food by SMS text messaging.[52][53] During a brainstorming session to pitch another startup, the idea was created for what Graham called the "front page of the Internet".[56] For this idea, Huffman and Ohanian were accepted in Y Combinator's first class.[52][53] Supported by the funding from Y Combinator,[57] Huffman coded the site in Common Lisp[58] and together with Ohanian launched Reddit in June 2005.[59][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] Ohanian later wrote that instead of labeling Swartz as a co-founder, the correct description is that Swartz's company was acquired by Reddit 6 months after he and Huffman had started.[63] Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, on October 31, 2006, for a reported $10 million to $20 million[52][64] and the team moved to San Francisco.[65] In November 2006, Swartz blogged complaining about the new corporate environment, criticizing its level of productivity.[66] In January 2007, Swartz was fired for undisclosed reasons.[67]

Huffman and Ohanian left Reddit in 2009.[68] Huffman went on to co-found Hipmunk with Adam Goldstein, and later recruited Ohanian[69] and Slowe to his new company.[70] After Huffman and Ohanian left Reddit, Erik Martin, who joined the company as a community manager in 2008 and later became general manager in 2011, played a role in Reddit's growth.[71] VentureBeat noted that Martin was "responsible for keeping the site going" under Condé Nast's ownership.[72] Martin facilitated the purchase of Reddit Gifts and led charity initiatives.[72]

Reddit launched two different ways of advertising on the site in 2009. The company launched sponsored content[73] and a self-serve ads platform that year.[74][75] Reddit launched its Reddit Gold benefits program in July 2010, which offered new features to editors and created a new revenue stream for the business that did not rely on banner ads.[76] On September 6, 2011, Reddit became operationally independent of Condé Nast, operating as a separate subsidiary of its parent company, Advance Publications.[77] Reddit and other websites participated in a 12-hour sitewide blackout on January 18, 2012, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act.[78][79] In May 2012, Reddit joined the Internet Defense League, a group formed to organize future protests.[80]

Yishan Wong joined Reddit as CEO in 2012.[81] Wong resigned from Reddit in 2014, after more than two years at the company, citing disagreements about his proposal to move the company's offices from San Francisco to nearby Daly City, but also the "stressful and draining" nature of the position.[82][83] Ohanian credited Wong with leading the company as its user base grew from 35 million to 174 million.[83] Wong oversaw the company as it raised $50 million in funding and spun off as an independent company.[74] Also during this time, Reddit began accepting the digital currency Bitcoin for its Reddit Gold subscription service through a partnership with bitcoin payment processor Coinbase in February 2013.[84] Ellen Pao replaced Wong as interim CEO in 2014 and resigned in 2015 amid a user revolt over the firing of a popular Reddit employee.[85] During her tenure, Reddit initiated an anti-harassment policy,[86] banned involuntary sexualization, and banned several forums that focused on bigoted content or harassment of individuals.[87]

After five years away from the company, Ohanian and Huffman returned to leadership roles at Reddit: Ohanian became the full-time executive chairman in November 2014 following Wong's resignation, while Pao's departure on July 10, 2015, led to Huffman's return as the company's chief executive.[88][89] After Huffman rejoined Reddit as CEO, he launched Reddit's iOS and Android apps, fixed Reddit's mobile website, and created A/B testing infrastructure.[52] The company launched a major redesign of its website in April 2018.[21] Huffman said new users were turned off from Reddit because it had looked like a "dystopian Craigslist".[21] Reddit also instituted several technological improvements,[90] such as a new tool that allows users to hide posts, comments, and private messages from selected redditors in an attempt to curb online harassment,[91] and new content guidelines. These new content guidelines were aimed at banning content inciting violence and quarantining offensive material.[52][90] Slowe, the company's first employee, rejoined Reddit in 2017 as chief technology officer.[92] Reddit's largest round of funding came in 2017, when the company raised $200 million and was valued at $1.8 billion.[93] The funding supported Reddit's site redesign and video efforts.[93]

On June 5, 2020, Alexis Ohanian resigned as a member of the board in response to the George Floyd protests and requested to be replaced "by a Black candidate".[94]

On December 13, 2020, Reddit announced it had acquired short-form video social platform Dubsmash, hiring its entire team, with the intention integrating its video creation tools into Reddit.[95]

Reddit was originally written in Common Lisp but was rewritten in Python in December 2005[96] for wider access to code libraries and greater development flexibility. The Python web framework that Swartz developed to run the site, web.py, is available as an open source project.[97] As of November 10, 2009, Reddit used Pylons as its web framework.[98] Reddit was an open source project from June 18, 2008 until 2017.[99][100] During that time, all of the code and libraries written for Reddit were freely available on GitHub, with the exception of the anti-spam/cheating portions.[101] In a September 2017 announcement, the company stated that "we've been doing a bad job of keeping our open-source product repos up to date", partially because "open-source makes it hard for us to develop some features 'in the clear' ... without leaking our plans too far in advance", prompting the decision to archive its public GitHub repos.[100]

While Reddit has continued calling itself open source[102] it has failed to continue updating its code for years. Development forks continue slowly on Reddit-like alternative sites such as SaidIt.net, Ceddit.com, Notabug.io, and Rebbit.kr.

As of November 10, 2009, Reddit decommissioned its own servers and migrated to Amazon Web Services.[103] 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.[104]

In 2010, Reddit released its first mobile web interface for easier reading and navigating the website on touch screen devices.[105] For several years, redditors relied on third-party apps to access Reddit on mobile devices. In October 2014, Reddit acquired one of them, Alien Blue, which became the official iOS Reddit app.[106] Reddit removed Alien Blue and released its official application, Reddit: The Official App, on Google Play and the iOS App Store in April 2016.[107] The company released an app for Reddit's question-and-answer Ask Me Anything subreddit in 2014.[108] The app allowed users to see active Ask Me Anythings, receive notifications, ask questions and vote.[108]

Reddit homepage in 2005 – the site's design was based on this until the 2018 redesign, but the classic layout is still available on old.reddit.com

The site has undergone several products and design changes since it originally launched in 2005. When it initially launched, there were no comments or subreddits. Comments were added in 2005[21][109] and interest-based groups (called 'subreddits') were introduced in 2008.[110] Allowing users to create subreddits has led to much of the activity that redditors would recognize that helped define Reddit. These include subreddits "WTF", "funny", and "AskReddit".[110] Reddit rolled out its multireddit feature, the site's biggest change to its front page in years, in 2013.[111] With the multireddits, users see top stories from a collection of subreddits.[111]

In 2015, Reddit enabled embedding, so users could share Reddit content on other sites.[112] In 2016, Reddit began hosting images using a new image uploading tool, a move that shifted away from the uploading service Imgur that had been the de facto service.[113] Users still can upload images to Reddit using Imgur.[113] Reddit's in-house video uploading service for desktop and mobile launched in 2017.[114] Previously, users had to use third-party video uploading services, which Reddit acknowledged was time-consuming for users.[114]

Reddit released its "spoiler tags" feature in January 2017.[115] The feature warns users of potential spoilers in posts and pixelates preview images.[115] Reddit unveiled changes to its public front page, called r/popular, in 2017;[26] the change creates a front page free of potentially adult-oriented content for unregistered users.[26]

In late 2017, Reddit declared it wanted to be a mobile-first site, launching several changes to its apps for iOS and Android.[45] The new features included user-to-user chat, a theater mode for viewing visual content, and mobile tools for the site's moderators. "Mod mode" lets moderators manage content and their subreddits on mobile devices.[45]

Reddit launched its redesigned website in 2018, with its first major visual update in a decade.[21] Development for the new site took more than a year.[21] It was the result of an initiative by Huffman upon returning to Reddit, who said the site's outdated look deterred new users.[21] The new site features a hamburger menu to help users navigate the site, different views, and new fonts to better inform redditors if they are clicking on a Reddit post or an external link.[21] The goal was not only for Reddit to improve its appearance, but also to make it easier to accommodate a new generation of Reddit users.[21] Additionally, Reddit's growth had strained the site's back end;[116] Huffman and Reddit Vice President of Engineering Nick Caldwell told The Wall Street Journal's COI Journal that Reddit needed to leverage artificial intelligence and other modern digital tools.[116] Registered users can opt-out from the redesign and use "Old Reddit" which continues to use the previous design. Unregistered users can access it via old.reddit.com.[117]

Original Reddit wordmark (2005-2018), still seen on the "classic" Reddit interface

Reddit's logo consists of a time-traveling alien named Snoo and the company name stylized as "reddit". The alien has an oval head, pom-pom ears, and an antenna.[118] Its colors are black, white, and orange-red.[118] The mascot was created in 2005 while company co-founder Alexis Ohanian was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia.[119] Ohanian doodled the creature while bored in a marketing class.[120] Originally, Ohanian sought to name the mascot S'new, a play on "What's new?", to tie the mascot into Reddit's premise as the "front page of the Internet".[118][120] Eventually, the name Snoo was chosen.[118] In 2011, Ohanian outlined the logo's evolution with a graphic that showcased several early versions, including various spellings of the website name, such as "Reditt".[119]

Snoo is genderless and colorless, so the logo is moldable.[118][121] Over the years, the Reddit logo has frequently changed for holidays and other special events.[119] Many subreddits have a customized Snoo logo to represent the subreddit.[120] Redditors can also submit their own logos, which sometimes appear on the site's front page, or create their own customized versions of Snoo for their communities (or "subreddits").[119][21] When Reddit revamped its website in April 2018, the company imposed several restrictions on how Snoo can be designed: Snoo's head "should always appear blank or neutral", Snoo's eyes are orange-red, and Snoo cannot have fingers.[118] Snoo's purpose is to discover and explore humanity.[118]

Users have used Reddit as a platform for their charitable and philanthropic efforts.[159] Redditors raised more than $600,000 for charity in support of comedians Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear; more than $180,000 for Haiti earthquake relief efforts; and delivered food pantries' Amazon wish lists.[159][160] In 2010, Christians, Muslims, and atheists held a friendly fundraising competition, where the groups raised more than $50,000.[161] A similar donation drive in 2011 saw the atheism subreddit raise over $200,000 for charity.[162] In February 2014, Reddit announced it would donate 10% of its annual ad revenue to non-profits voted upon by its users.[163] As a result of the campaign, Reddit 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.[164]

Reddit has been used for a wide variety of political engagement including the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama,[165][166] Donald Trump,[167] Hillary Clinton,[168] and Bernie Sanders.[169] It has also been used for self-organizing sociopolitical activism such as protests, communication with politicians and active communities. Reddit has become a popular place for worldwide political discussions.[170]

The March for Science originated from a discussion on Reddit over the deletion of all references to climate change from the White House website, about which a user commented that "There needs to be a Scientists' March on Washington".[171][172][173] On April 22, 2017, more than 1 million scientists and supporters participated in more than 600 events in 66 countries across the globe.[174]

Reddit users have been engaged in the defense of Internet privacy, net neutrality and Internet anonymity.

Reddit created an Internet blackout day and was joined by Wikipedia and other sites in 2012 in protest of the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP acts.[175][176] On January 18, Reddit participated in a 12-hour sitewide blackout to coincide with a congressional committee hearing on the measures.[176][177] During that time, Reddit displayed a message on the legislation's effects on Reddit, in addition to resources on the proposed laws.[177] In May 2012, Reddit joined the Internet Defense League, a group formed to organize future protests.[80]

The site and its users protested the Federal Communications Commission as it prepared to scrap net neutrality rules.[178] In 2017, users upvoted "Battle for the Net" posts enough times that they filled up the entire front page.[178] On another day, the front page was overtaken by posts showcasing campaign donations received by members of Congress from the telecommunications industry.[178] Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has also advocated for net neutrality rules.[179][180] In 2017, Huffman told The New York Times that without net neutrality protections, "you give internet service providers the ability to choose winners and losers".[179] On Reddit, Huffman urged redditors to express support for net neutrality and contact their elected representatives in Washington, D.C.[180] Huffman said that the repeal of net neutrality rules stifles competition. He said he and Reddit would continue to advocate for net neutrality.[181]

As a response to Glenn Beck's August 28, 2010, Restoring Honor rally, in September 2010 Reddit users started a movement to persuade satirist Stephen Colbert to have a counter-rally in Washington, D.C.[182] 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.[183] Over $600,000 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.[184]

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, he and Colbert had already thought of the idea and the deposit for using the National Mall was already paid during the summer, so it acted mostly as a "validation of what we were thinking about attempting".[185] 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."[186]

In May 2014 Reddit was blocked in Indonesia on the grounds that it hosts content that includes nudity.[187][188]

In June 2015 Reddit was blocked in China for a few weeks. The site was unblocked later.[189]

ISPs in India were found to be blocking traffic over Reddit for intermittent periods in some regions in 2019.[190]

In August 2015, Russia banned Reddit after Russia's Federal Drug Control Service decided that Reddit promoted conversations about psychedelic drugs. The site was unblocked later.[191]

On April Fools' Day 2011, Reddit replaced its Reddit Gold subscription with Reddit Mold, a joke version of the premium service that could be given to users to make the website experience worse. For example, users who were given Mold would only be able to see less posts per page as well as not being able to post anything containing the letter E. These effects were amplified upon receiving more Mold, such as losing the ability to post another letter for each Mold received.[192]

On April Fools' Day 2013, Reddit claimed that they acquired the video game Team Fortress 2, and initiated a site-wide event where users were randomly assigned into two teams, Orangered and Periwinkle, based on both the colors of the Team Fortress 2 teams as well as the colors of the upvote and downvote buttons. Like in Team Fortress 2, users were randomly given items and cosmetics to use, most importantly weapons to use against users on the opposing team.[193] Valve also participated in the event, updating Team Fortress 2 with Reddit related cosmetics.[194] When the event ended, team Orangered was declared the victor.

On April Fools' Day 2015, a social experiment subreddit called r/thebutton appeared. It displayed a button and a 60-second countdown timer. User accounts created before that day were eligible to participate. A user could only click the button once, or opt not to click it. If a user clicked the button the timer was globally reset to 60 seconds,[195] 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 reached zero several times due to technical problems but eventually expired without further problems on June 5, 2015, after which the subreddit was archived.[196]

For April Fools' Day 2016, another experiment was launched involving the "Robin" chat widget. After clicking a titular button, an IRC-like chat window was opened with one other user, and allowed a certain time to pick among three options: "Grow", "Stay" and "Leave".[197] "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 a social experiment based on 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).[198] 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.[199]

For April Fools' Day' 2018, an experiment launched on the subreddit r/circleoftrust.[200] Upon clicking a button, each user was given one "circle" that they could entrust to others with the circle's password key to unlock and join the circle. While each user received one personal circle, they could join or betray any other user circles. Clicking the "join" button on another's circle would cause the owner's circle to grow bigger, while the "betray" button would cause the owner's circle to no longer function (having "betrayed" the owner's trust). On the r/circleoftrust subreddit, all users have a "flair" next to their username that displays the number of users who've joined their personal circle, followed by the number of other circles the user has joined. Those who had betrayed another user's circle have a null sign ("∅") next to their numbered flair. The experiment ended on April 6, 2018.

On April Fools' Day 2019, a social experiment subreddit called r/sequence was released. The experiment consisted of a community-driven sequencer that users interacted with by submitting GIFs or text slides to be compiled into a movie.[201] The order of the GIFs and text slides were chosen by users through upvoting one GIF or text slide per scene. The most upvoted GIF or text slide was locked into the next available scene for every three minutes. At the end, once the entire sequence was filled, it was posted as a full story in an external page. The experiment ended at April 3, 2019, 11:08 PM GMT.[202]

During April Fools' Day 2020, r/imposter was released. Users were to identify a machine-generated response from a group of responses to the question "What makes you human?" (and, later, "What makes you an imposter?") and had an option to respond to the question after doing so. The experiment ended on April 3, 2020.

AMAs, or "Ask Me Anything" interviews, are among Reddit's most popular features. As of August 1, 2018, r/IAmA, which is the most popular community for AMAs, was the eighth most popular subreddit on the site with 17.7 million subscribers.[203] During an AMA on r/IAmA and other subreddits, users can ask questions to interviewees. Notable participants include former-United States President Barack Obama (while campaigning for the 2012 election),[204] Bill Gates (multiple times),[205] and Donald Trump (also while campaigning).[206] AMAs have featured CEO Steve Huffman,[207] as well as figures from the entertainment industry (including Elizabeth Banks and George Clooney),[145][208] literature (Margaret Atwood),[209] space (Buzz Aldrin),[210] privacy (Edward Snowden),[211] and others, such as experts who answered questions about the transgender community.[212] The Atlantic wrote that an AMA "imports the aspirational norms of honesty and authenticity from pseudonymous Internet forums into a public venue".[213]

RedditGifts is a program that offers gift exchanges throughout the year.[214] The fan-made RedditGifts site was created in 2009 for a Secret Santa exchange among Reddit users, which has since become the world's largest[215] and set a Guinness World record.[216] In 2009, 4,500 redditors participated.[215] 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.[217][218][219] In 2014, about 200,000 users from 188 countries participated.[220] Several celebrities have participated in the program, including Bill Gates,[221] Alyssa Milano,[222] and Snoop Dogg.[223] Eventually, the secret Santa program expanded to various other occasions through RedditGifts, which Reddit acquired in 2011.[215]

The online Reddit community conducts real-world meetups across the globe each summer.[224] These in-person meetups are called Global Reddit Meetup Day.[224][225]

Mister Splashy Pants logo used on November 27, 2007

Reddit communities occasionally coordinate Reddit-external projects such as skewing polls on other websites, like the 2007 incident 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 encouraged the prank 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.[226][227]

On December 16, 2010, a redditor named Matt posted a link describing how he had donated a kidney, and included a JustGive link to encourage users to give donations to the American Cancer Society.[236] 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.[237]

On October 18, 2011, an IT manager submitted a post to the subreddit r/gameswap offering Redditors to trade one of 312 codes he had been given for the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.[238] A group of users obtained his personal details, and began to blackmail him for the codes.[239] 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.[240]

Following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Reddit faced criticism after users wrongly identified a number of people as suspects.[241] 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.[242] The family later confirmed Tripathi's death was a result of suicide.[243] 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.[244] The incident was later referenced in the season 5 episode of the CBS TV series The Good Wife titled "Whack-a-Mole",[245] as well as The Newsroom.[246][247]

In late October 2013, the moderators of subreddit "r/politics" banned a large group of websites. Some were left-wing opinion websites, such as Mother Jones, HuffPost, Salon, AlterNet, Rawstory, The Daily Kos, Truthout, Media Matters, and ThinkProgress as well as some 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 providing much "bad journalism".[248] 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.[249] 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 funded by the Russian Government.[250]

In August 2014, photos from the 2014 celebrity photo hack were widely disseminated across the site.[251][252] A dedicated subreddit, "TheFappening", was created for this purpose,[253] and contained links to most if not all of the criminally obtained explicit images.[254][255][256][257] 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.[258] The subreddit was banned on September 6.[259] The scandal led to wider criticisms concerning the website's administration from The Verge and The Daily Dot.[260][261]

On December 18, 2014, Reddit took the unusual step of banning a subreddit, "SonyGOP", that was being used to distribute hacked Sony files.[262]

After Ellen Pao became CEO, she was initially a target of criticism by users who objected to the deletion of content critical of herself and her husband.[263] Later on June 10, 2015, Reddit shut down the 150,000-subscriber "fatpeoplehate" subreddit and four others citing issues related to harassment.[264] 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.[265] One of the latter complaints concerned a subreddit that was "expressing support" for the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting.[266] Responding to the accusations of "skewed enforcement", Reddit reaffirmed their commitment to free expression and stated, "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.[267] 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.[268][269] Following this, a Change.org petition to remove Pao as CEO of Reddit Inc. reached over 200,000 signatures.[270][271][272] 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.[273][274][275][276] On July 10, Pao resigned as CEO and was replaced by former CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman.[277]

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".[278] 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.[279]

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"[280][281][282] 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.[282][283] Shortly thereafter, announcements concerning new advertisement content drew criticism on the website.[284][285]

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.[286][287]

On November 23, 2016, Steve Huffman admitted to having replaced his user name with the names of r/The_Donald moderators in many insulting comments.[288][289] He did so by changing insulting comments made towards him and made it appear as if the insult were directed at the moderators of r/The_Donald.[290]

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.[291] The Reddit forum r/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".[292] 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.[292][293]

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".[5][294][295]

In February 2017, Reddit banned the alt-right subreddit (r/altright) 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.[296][297] The forum's users and moderators accused Reddit administrators of having political motivations for the ban.[298][299]

Donald Trump supporters on r/The_Donald generally agree that white genocide is occurring. Participants there describe "meme magic" as the idea that the internet memes they create can be willed into existence. For months leading up to the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" riot, The_Donald participants shared memes with the slogan "All Lives Splatter" captioning cartoons of protesters being run over. The real-life Charlottesville car attack, which killed one and injured dozens, brought those memes to life.[300]

In March 2018, it was revealed that Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, had hidden Russian troll activity from users.[301]

On July 12, the creator and head moderator of the GamerGate subreddit, r/KotakuInAction, removed all of the moderators and set the forum to private, alleging it to have become "infested with racism and sexism". A Reddit employee restored the forum and its moderators an hour later.[302][303]

In January 2019, a Philippine-based subreddit, r/jakolandia was accused of "distributing” posts of photos of women, including celebrities, apparently without their consent, similar to "a number" of secret Facebook groups that had been engaging in illegal activity of sharing "obscene" photos of women and possibly child pornography.[304]

In February 2019, Chinese company Tencent invested $150 million into Reddit as part of its Series D.[305][306] This resulted in a large backlash from Reddit users, who were worried about potential censorship.[307][308][309] Many posts featuring subjects censored in China, such as Tiananmen Square, Tank Man, and Winnie the Pooh, received popularity on Reddit.[306][309][310]

In early June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, over 800 moderators signed an open letter demanding a policy banning hate speech, a shutdown of racist and sexist subreddits, and more employee support for moderation. Bloomberg News pointed out the company's slow reaction to r/watchpeopledie, and the harassment that accompanied new unmoderated features like icons for purchase and public chats.[311]

On June 29, 2020, Reddit updated its content policy and introduced rules aimed at curbing the presence of communities they believed to be "promoting hate",[312] and banned approximately 2,000 subreddits that were found to be in violation of the new guidelines on the same day.[313] Larger subreddits affected by the bans included r/The_Donald, a subreddit intended for the support of President Donald Trump,[314] r/GenderCritical,[315] the platform's largest and most active anti-transgender radical feminist subreddit,[316] and r/ChapoTrapHouse, a far-left subreddit originally created by fans of the podcast Chapo Trap House.[315] Some media outlets and political commentators also condemned the banning of the r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse subreddits as a violation of the right to free political expression.[317]

On August 3, 2020, moderators of the subreddit r/Animemes banned usage of the word 'trap' to refer to any person or fictional character. The ban was predicated on the real-world usage of the word "trap" as a slur against transgender people, with moderators citing the trans panic defence. In response, many users of the subreddit contended that 'trap' was not being used in a transphobic manner, but instead to endearingly refer to crossdressers, otokonoko, and characters with related identities in animanga. Many users started brigading the subreddit, which resulted in a loss of over 100,000 subscribers to the subreddit.[318][319]

After the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Reddit announced that it had banned the subreddit r/DonaldTrump in response to repeated policy violations and alluding to the potential influence the community had on those who participated in or supported the storming.[320] The move followed similar actions from social media platforms, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and more.[321] The ban brought controversy from those who believed it furthered an agenda and censorship of conservative ideologies.[322] [323] The subreddit had over 52,000 members just before it was banned.[324]

The GameStop short squeeze was primarily organized on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets.[325]

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