What did u/spez do in response to r/The_Donald that so offended Redditors?

What is reddit?

Is it a community??

• Recall the features of a community?
• Does Reddit qualify?

What did you think of Reddiquette?

• Remember the human.
• Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life.
• Read the rules of a community before making a submission.
• Read the reddiquette…. [it’s] a living, breathing, working document which may change over time as the community faces new problems in its growth.
• Moderate based on quality, not opinion. Well written and interesting content can be worthwhile, even if you disagree with it. (Reddit 2019)
• …

Why small communities?

At the individual level … people have control over their experiences, curating a set of content and users that is predictable and navigable. At the platform level, … seem to have a symbiotic relationship with large communities. By breaking up broader topical niches … likely help to keep a larger set of users engaged. (HwangFoote 2021)

What about relationships?

If Facebook is people you know sharing things you don’t care about, Reddit is things you care about shared by people you don’t know. (QUARTZ 2018)

Can you suggest?

• one weird reddit?
• one uplifting reddit?

Reddit has cleaned up many of its controversial communities but other problematic subs persist as often discussed on Ovarit.

Is Reddit profitable??

• How can online communities fund themselves?
  • Metafilter
    • one-time $5 initiation fee plus AdSense on AskMetafilter
  • Reddit
    • ads (auction), native ads?, Gold (Partners?)

• Unprofitable in 2023 with $170M in annual revenue and $10B valuation.
• In summar 2023, they closed API and killed 3rd-party apps.
• In 2024, Google AI licensed access to content for $60 million. (Roth 2024)
• In late 2024, reported a profit of $30 million, along with $348 million in revenue — a 68 percent increase year over year. (Roth 2024)

“When pixels collide” (sudoscript 2017)

Northeastern’s effort

2017 visualization

Returned in 2022 & 2023

• 2022 r/place returned for April 1 (fool’s day).
• Following API controversy, Reddit resurrected r/place again for 2023.
  • It backfired with “fuck” u/spez campaign.
  • Admins were allowed to place pixels without restrictions to enforce r/place rules.

Subreddits

• subreddits
  • /r/findbostonbombers
  • /r/beatingwomen
  • /r/CreepShots

Violentacrez

Marantz discussion (Marantz 2018)

• Is Reddit moving in the right direction (i.e., away from libertarian free speech)?
• Did u/spez screw up by replace his name, in attacks with those of r/The_Donald mods?
• If a platform becomes strict, won’t people just go elsewhere? (e.g., Voat, Gab, Hatreon, Parlor, Truth Social)
• What responsibility does a platform have to a society?
• What responsibility does a platform have to its moderators?

(Lagorio-Chafkin 2018, “We are the nerds”)

ex. Design a content policy for reddit

What rubric would you use to exclude inappropriate content? (10 mins)

Since 2021, content is prohibited if it is:

1. harasses, bullies, or threats
2. cheats or manipulates
3. violates peoples’ privacy
4. sexual or suggestive content involving minors [2015+]
5. impersonates an individual or an entity
6. doesn’t label (NSFW) content and communities
7. illegal
8. interferes with normal use of Reddit

Moderators speak out

The job of policing … the community team, the trust-and-safety team, and the anti-evil team—which are sometimes described, respectively, as good cop, bad cop, and RoboCop. (Marantz 2018)

Unpaid & abused

Anything else from QICs?

Wrap up

Write a 3-minute paper predicting Reddit’s likely future five years from now.

Review

What was your prediction of Reddit’s future five years from now?