Reddit is a news aggregator and bulletin board, co-founded by Steve "Spez" Huffman and Alexis Ohanian on June 23, 2005.¹⁾ It was then acquired by Condé Nast for $10 million from 2006²⁾³⁾ to 2011,⁴⁾ before it returned to independence, then the company went public in 2024.⁵⁾

For some reason,⁶⁾⁷⁾ the megaforum became a powerhouse in the 2010s, and gradually became a way to manipulate public opinion. It's also worth noting that Google and Reddit struck a deal in 2024,⁸⁾ thus why Google forces Reddit results^9)10)11) and has indexing exclusivity.¹²⁾

On the surface, it's a basic website with numerous 'subreddits' (user-created boards), where users will submit content, discuss, and vote with an overbearing 'karma' (reputation) system. It doesn't really offer much else. There is the 'Reddit Premium' subscription service,¹³⁾ and it used to have 'Reddit Coins' for 'gilding' (awarding) posts¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾ before it was replaced with some monetization-oriented 'contributor' program.¹⁶⁾

Most of Reddit's success came at the expense of Digg's downfall¹⁷⁾ and several niche internet forums. All technicalities aside, it tends to be a miserable place for cynics, debate nerds,¹⁸⁾ and killjoys as it fosters an insufferable, pretentious, and unwelcoming atmosphere, especially when its users can be snarky, very easy to upset,¹⁹⁾ and prone to giving non-answers just to comment.

Toggle chart.

The user activity on Reddit may come off as 'non-genuine' since there's a lot of active manipulation, given the website's beginnings of using bots to give off the illusion of activity,²³⁾ but the unusually high activities at the Eglin Air Force Base²⁴⁾ hinted that intelligence agencies were starting to look into how to weaponize Reddit to manufacture consent, eventually allowing an Atlanticist to be their Director of Policy.²⁵⁾²⁶⁾

During their attempts to undermine the Belt and Road Initiative, there was a disastrous /r/IAmA for a 'Uyghur activist'²⁷⁾ who had been working for United States intelligence since the 1980s.²⁸⁾²⁹⁾ In 2025, the federal mass layoffs revealed that federal employees had a subreddit at /r/fednews,^30)31)32) then we saw a continued uptick of companies attempting to weaponize Reddit.³³⁾

Anyways, if you've ever stopped to observe locality subreddits with the 'perfect' name, you may discover that the moderators either have a political bias³⁴⁾ or do not have the locality's best interests in mind. Some may attempt to create alternatives, but the alternatives will usually be overshadowed as they don't have the 'perfect' name and the subscriber count never goes down.³⁵⁾ A few examples are in the dropdown.

See alternative subreddits?

“And instead of using our app, they use that app. Is that not competitive?”
– Steve “Spez” Huffman³⁶⁾

In the past, Reddit had the paid 'iReddit' app,³⁷⁾³⁸⁾ later abandoned 'iReddit' to acquire the popular third-party alternative Alien Blue,³⁹⁾⁴⁰⁾ then made a new 'Reddit' app⁴¹⁾⁴²⁾ which continued to be overshadowed by other popular third-party alternatives.⁴³⁾ This evidently struck a chord with Huffman,⁴⁴⁾ so Reddit copied Musk's example⁴⁵⁾ and announced API changes on April 18, 2023⁴⁶⁾ with paid tiers.^47)48)49)50)

The userbase was not pleased,⁵¹⁾ so a 'protest' began on June 12, 2023,^52)53)54)55) but Reddit would counter said protests by threatening all participating moderators,⁵⁶⁾⁵⁷⁾ and Huffman tried to shift the blame onto the unpaid moderators⁵⁸⁾⁵⁹⁾ before shutting up.⁶⁰⁾ During this, some users migrated to the Fediverse,⁶¹⁾⁶²⁾ then we saw /r/place open as damage control, with a very clear “Fuck Spez” message written on it.⁶³⁾⁶⁴⁾

• The default Reddit username has 2 words and 2-4 numbers, sometimes with dashes or underscores, which is hard to ignore once you recognize the pattern. There are valid reasons for using a default username, such as being a non-English speaker or not knowing that usernames can't be changed unlike other platforms,⁶⁵⁾⁶⁶⁾ but it's more interesting when such accounts troll or push propaganda.
  • Of course, we do have to ask: Why didn't they set their username when they originally registered? Why didn't they just delete and remake their account early on with their desired username?
  • It also looks incredibly silly when a subreddit has drama, then you see that the user(s) in the drama have default usernames, which completely changes how you look at it. I mean, 'The Legendary Feud of /r/NoDistribution1025 and /r/Ok-Telephone-2137' doesn't sound memorable, does it?
• You used to be able to make a throwaway account at old.reddit.com, but they've recently changed this, forcing you to now sign up with an email address, a phone number, or an SSO method.
  • In 2025, the website started allowing users to customize their profile,⁶⁷⁾ granting users the ability to hide their post history by adjusting 'content and activity' in profile settings, which is further 'helped' by the controversial API change making logging difficult without money to blow.
• If you wanted to link to another subreddit without pasting the full URL, it used to require two forward slashes (/r/) before support for one forward slash (r/) was added in 2015, which later had the effect of Reddit users generally using one forward slashes when discussing subreddits.
• The /r/shitredditsays (SRS) subreddit was infamous in the early 2010s since it called out instances of racism and sexism on the platform, occasionally escalating to brigading, dogpiling, and doxing.⁶⁸⁾ However, it eventually subsided because the administrators started cracking down, the internet became politically aware soon after, and users migrated to new subreddits with less vague concepts.
  • However, these types of communities did, in fact, point out that white supremacist trolls began to target and invade Reddit by pushing far-right content as early as 2011.⁶⁹⁾⁷⁰⁾
  • In 2013, 4chan would reference /r/shitredditsays by setting up its “Shit 4chan Says” ([s4s]) board for their April Fools prank,⁷¹⁾ though the joke was mostly lost as it became a nonsensical board.
• The 'Neoliberal Project' (/r/neoliberal) notably joined the Progressive Policy Institute think tank,⁷²⁾ who have taken funds from Fossil Fuel industry.⁷³⁾⁷⁴⁾ Their network has since rebranded to 'Center for New Liberalism' (CNL), so take note of the company that they associate themselves with.
• Around 2020, it was discovered that 'power moderators' managed an alarming number of their Top 500 subreddits.⁷⁵⁾ One deleted, two were suspended, leaving /u/Merari01 and /u/gallowboob.
• The /r/legaladvice (and /r/bestoflegaladvice) subreddit is known to be moderated by police officers, so users are advised to DM the original poster if the moderators are trying to get them killed.
• During the NFT craze, Reddit and VaynerNFC (Vayner3)⁷⁶⁾ released “The ABCs of NFTs Playbook” which proclaimed that “NFTs are here to stay”,⁷⁷⁾ and followed it up with 'blockchain-backed' collectible avatars in 2022.⁷⁸⁾ These collectible avatars would then be phased out in 2025.⁷⁹⁾
• Reddit will consider a subreddit to be 'unmoderated' if the mod queue page isn't being cleared.

• Reddit (Old Reddit) - The front page of Reddit.
  • @reddit and @redditstatus on Twitter - The two official Reddit accounts on Twitter.
• Unddit - The current way of viewing deleted Reddit posts.