![]() ![]() To a greater extent than most large platforms, Reddit allows and expects its groups to moderate themselves. Rather than prioritizing individual profiles, it emphasizes communities and their posts rather than presenting its users with simple chronological feeds or overwhelming them with algorithmic recommendations, it relies heavily on user feedback to rank content in the form of upvotes and downvotes. ![]() ![]() As similar as its underlying business model may be, Reddit feels different from its social-media competitors and contributes something different to the internet around it. It is, substantially, in the same business as Meta, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok - giving people something to use mostly for free in exchange for their monetizable time and attention.īut Huffman’s mixed metaphors do tell a story. It’s an advertising- and subscription-supported web service that also depends on free content and unpaid labor from its users. Reddit is not a feudal government, or a city in any sense neither is it ultimately “democratic,” as he frequently suggests. Huffman is stretching in a variety of directions here. He called the protesting moderators the “landed gentry” of the platform, the “people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.” In an interview with NBC News, Huffman accused volunteer moderators of subverting the true will of Reddit’s users, who he suggested increasingly sympathize with his position. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. Why would we subsidize this small group? Why would we effectively pay them to use Reddit but not everybody else who also contributes to Reddit? Does that make sense? These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And we’re not undoing that business decision.” By the end of the conversation, he had left the “city” behind entirely:ĩ0-plus percent of Reddit users are on our platform, contributing, and are monetized either through ads or Reddit Premium. In an interview with the Verge, Huffman began by describing Reddit as “a platform built by its users” and compared it to a city: “We’re a platform and tech company on one hand, but on the other it’s a living organism, this democratic living organism, created by its users.” Pressed on the protest over the new API policy, though, he quickly turned: “That’s our business decision. In a leaked memo addressing the uproar, CEO Steve Huffman assured staffers that “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well,” and that it hadn’t had a “significant revenue impact.” As the blackout has stretched on - some communities reopened after two days as they had initially planned, but many have remained closed - his tone has hardened. Now, its leadership needs that to change, and they’re running out of patience. In the process of becoming a pillar of online life, Reddit never turned a profit. ![]() Reddit’s position is that third-party apps, including popular Reddit browsers like Apollo that aim to improve the experience of using the site, cost the company money while undermining its business model and functioning as “competitors” - echoing Elon Musk’s justifications for a similar move at Twitter earlier this year. The blackout was organized in protest of Reddit’s plan to charge developers for access to its data, which could have the effect of killing a range of tools and apps used by Reddit’s volunteer moderators and some of its most devoted users and contributors. Remarkably, so did Google: As one of the internet’s biggest searchable repositories of content made by humans, including millions of user-generated questions and helpful answers, Reddit, which was started in 2005 as a link aggregator with the goal of being the “front page of the internet,” has become part of the search engine’s core infrastructure. In an instant, Reddit became less interesting and useful. On Monday, thousands of the largest communities on Reddit went private, effectively removing themselves from the site. ![]()
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