Somewhere between news and memes: what is Reddit?

Reddit is primarily popular in the USA, where it has a sig­nif­i­cant loyal read­er­ship – about 42% of Reddit users are American. However, the website is growing in pop­u­lar­i­ty abroad, although it may take some time before they start seeing com­pa­ra­ble numbers.

The in­creas­ing­ly negative media attention on Facebook and the sub­se­quent mass Facebook user exodus is perhaps an op­por­tu­ni­ty for social networks like Reddit to gain more traction. But what exactly is Reddit?

Reddit describes itself as “The front page of the internet.” This term conveys their claim to a unique position. On the front page of a print newspaper, readers will find the daily topics and headlines that editors consider to be the most important. Reddit is claiming to be the first point of contact to the World Wide Web by calling them­selves its “homepage.” When talking about the US market, these claims are quite be­liev­able – after all, the number of sub­red­dits grew from almost 11,000 (2008) to about 1.64 million (September 2019) sub­red­dits in just 10 years.

Reddit gathers social news in an almost un­man­age­able number of “sub­red­dits.” These are founded by users and filled with content. The idea of the forum, based back in Roman antiquity, can be seen as the basis for the self-con­cep­tion of the website. The Forum Romanum, for example, was not only a central place where people visited temples and public trials, but also a place of spiritual exchange. 

Modern internet forums developed from the bulletin boards of the 1980s. A forum usually deals with a main topic and divides it into sub-topics. Therefore, there are di­rec­to­ries – subforums – that Reddit refers to as sub­red­dits. Users can use a subreddit to create new posts on a specific topic. These can be questions and requests for help, but also in­for­ma­tive news articles, images, and videos. Humorous and creative con­tri­bu­tions and con­tro­ver­sial dis­cus­sion topics are not uncommon.

Reddit was founded by Alexis Ohanion and Steve Huffman, who met at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia. Shortly after grad­u­a­tion, they wanted to develop a site called “My­Mo­bile­Menu” with the help of startup investors Y Com­bi­na­tor. The idea was ul­ti­mate­ly blocked, but they had set their foot in the door. Just a short time later, they received startup capital from the same company for their new project “Reddit: the front page of the internet.” Psy­chi­a­trist Christo­pher Slowe and the now deceased internet activist Aaron Swartz, along with his company Infogami, joined the de­vel­op­ment team.

Despite personal setbacks, the young founders continued to work on the project. Condé Nast pub­li­ca­tions bought the company and kicked Swartz off the project shortly af­ter­wards. The other founders also went their separate ways once their contracts were over.

While the de­vel­op­ers initially used dummy accounts to boost activity on the site, Reddit already had 10,926 sub­red­dits by 2008. In 2011, the number climbed to 60,191 and Reddit climbed out of Condé Nast’s shadow, and became in­de­pen­dent under their parent company Advance Pub­li­ca­tions. A year earlier, the platform in­tro­duced the Reddit Gold sub­scrip­tion model. Gold editors get access to the “Lounge,” a re­strict­ed subreddit, and a larger range of functions for around $4 per month.

Reddit became one of the first major websites to accept payment in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy Bitcoin for their paid sub­scrip­tion Reddit Gold, gifts, and Red­dit­made (subreddit fan articles that are for sale).

The company and its founders attracted a great deal of attention when they protested against the US draft law against online piracy (SOPA) in 2012, and, together with well-known websites like Wikipedia, took their entire domain offline in a “blackout.”

The site ad­min­is­tra­tors are still committed to pro­tect­ing freedom of speech and their users’ anonymity. This is expressed both in the page guide­lines and in the Red­di­quette (etiquette for Reddit). Trans­paren­cy is provided by the trans­paren­cy reports.

Steven Huffman returned as CEO in 2015. At that time, Reddit employed about 100 people, climbing to 230 in 2017. During these years, the platform has consisted mainly of American users. However, foreign language com­mu­ni­ties are starting to pop up, and the Reddit interface is available in over 90 languages – including “Pirate Slang” (“Ar­rrrrrrrrrrrrr”).

The website was orig­i­nal­ly written by Common Lisp, but before its release, the de­vel­op­ment team switched to Python. The web.py web framework, built by Swartz for Reddit and now available as open source software, has also been replaced with the successor Pylons. From 2008 to September 2017, Reddit’s source code was of­fi­cial­ly available as open source on GitHub. According to their own state­ments, however, the company had moved so far from their slapdash be­gin­nings that lengthy public code de­vel­op­ments were now hindering new product launches. Nev­er­the­less, Reddit continues to use open source tools, which is in line with the company’s policy.

In 2009, Reddit migrated to the Amazon Web Services cloud, and since 2012, Amazon Cloud­Search has been taking care of the internal search. The free NoSQL database man­age­ment system Apache Cassandra is in­creas­ing­ly used for the cloud database.

The open source software RabbitMQ is a message-oriented mid­dle­ware and supports Reddit’s offline processes.

The official Reddit app is available for Android and iOS. Since they are not par­tic­u­lar­ly popular in the community, some com­peti­tors have es­tab­lished them­selves, including Boost, Relay, Ba­con­Read­er, and Sync. For tablets running on Android, there is Reddita. There is even an (un­of­fi­cial) cross-platform app for desktop PCs: Redditr.

Forums live on user-created content. Community members create sub­red­dits on specific topics and set up forum rules. Other users act as mod­er­a­tors who enforce these rules in the subreddit. Reddit itself already has a ne­ti­quette (called “Red­di­quette”) and page guide­lines. Each subreddit also de­ter­mines its own rules that determine which con­tri­bu­tions are allowed. Mod­er­a­tors delete comments that violate forum rules and can exclude repeat offenders from the group.

The word “Red­di­quette” is derived from the suitcase word “ne­ti­quette.” It orig­i­nat­ed from the terms internet and etiquette and describes basic rules of conduct on the internet. Their basic tenant is that all users should feel welcome. On the one hand, it en­cour­ages par­tic­i­pa­tion in the internet and for that par­tic­i­pa­tion to be as polite as possible. On the other hand, ne­ti­quette rec­om­mends adhering to technical (security) standards and ensuring good leg­i­bil­i­ty. Users should also comply with ap­plic­a­ble law.

Here are some of the Red­di­quette points sum­ma­rized:

• Remember there’s a person behind the screen
• Read the community rules before sub­mit­ting
• Use proper grammar and spelling
• Link to the original source
• Search for du­pli­cates before sub­mit­ting
• Report any spam you come across
• So-called doxing (pub­lish­ing third party personal data) will get you banned
• Tag content that isn’t NSFW (Not Safe For Work)

Reddit users usually attach great im­por­tance to their privacy. VPNs and privacy dis­cus­sions are often the order of the day. This is also important to the site operators. In a 2014 interview, the head of com­mu­ni­ca­tion Victoria Taylor explained how Reddit informs its users as trans­par­ent­ly as possible about ge­o­tar­get­ing in banner ad­ver­tis­ing. Privacy and freedom of ex­pres­sion are Reddit’s core values. For example, those who engage in doxing are banished from the site. Reg­is­tra­tion can be completed in a matter of seconds:

1. Go to reddit.com
2. Select “Register” at the top right
3. A window will appear asking for your email address (this in­for­ma­tion is not required for reg­is­tra­tion, it is only used if you happen to forget your password)
4. Click on Next – even without giving your email, you can continue without any problems
5. Enter a username under “Username” (on the right side Reddit gives sug­ges­tions) and under “Password”, enter a secure password
6. Click on the captcha to confirm that you are not a bot
7. If you have entered your email address, you will receive an email with a link to verify it

There is a feed of the top posts on the Reddit main page. With the new design, you can choose between a tile view, the classic forum view, and a compact version. The feed can be filtered through the tabs “Best,” “Popular,” “New,” “Ascending,” etc. Here you will be able to find po­ten­tial­ly in­ter­est­ing sub­red­dits by browsing visible posts. You can also enter a term in the search bar, and the results list will show you sub­red­dits with thematic overlaps, as well as posts within the Reddit cosmos that use the term.

By clicking on the join button, posts from the subreddit in question will be included in your feed. By filtering for new posts, you can be one of the first people to rate a post and po­ten­tial­ly bring it to the top of the most popular posts of the day.

Members can publish posts within a subreddit. If there is no subreddit on a topic you are in­ter­est­ed in, you can create a subreddit yourself. Posts consist either of a link or of their own writing.

On the Reddit homepage, you will see a pen next to your name. Clicking on it opens a new window. You can decide whether you want to write your own text or prefer to share an image or link with others. In addition, you have to select a subreddit that you want the post to appear in. Think of a headline and select a tag that cat­e­go­rizes the content.

The number of sub­red­dits has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years. Some of the early sub­red­dits have prac­ti­cal­ly become classics. Many users have been sub­scribed to these channels for years. They receive news updates from a closed community they trust. Animated dis­cus­sions or snacks for en­ter­tain­ment are also included.

However, people who have been through something ex­tra­or­di­nary – or apply for the highest office in the USA – are par­tic­u­lar­ly popular. When Barack Obama gave an interview for thirty minutes during the 2012 election campaign called “I am Barack Obama, President of the United States” the Reddit website crashed due to the amount of traffic. The questions and answers he gave also made it into the national news program.