Reddit Turns 20 (zdnet.com) 99
ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols marks Reddit's 20 years of being "the front page of the internet," recalling its evolution from a scrappy startup into a cultural powerhouse that shaped online discourse, meme culture, and the way millions consume news and entertainment. Slashdot is also given a subtle nod in the opening line of the article. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: In 2005, if you were into social networks focused on links, you probably used Digg or Slashdot. However, two guys, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, recent graduates from the University of Virginia, wanted to create a hub where users could find, share, and discuss the internet's most interesting content. Little did they know where this idea would take them. After all, their concept was nothing new. Still, after Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator and seed capital firm, had shot down their first idea -- a mobile food-ordering app -- they pitched what would become Reddit to Graham, and he gave it his blessing. Drawing inspiration from sites like Delicious, a now-defunct social bookmarking service, and Slashdot, Huffman and Ohanian envisioned Reddit as a platform that would combine the best aspects of both: a place for sharing timely, ephemeral news and fostering vibrant community discussions of not just technology, but any topic users cared about. Their guiding mission was to build "the front page of the internet," a simple, user-driven site where anyone could submit content, and the community, not algorithms or editors, would decide what was most important through voting and discussion. They deliberately prioritized user participation and conversation over flashy features or heavy editorial control.
What set Reddit apart from its early rivals was its framework. Instead of one large all-in-one interface, the site borrowed the idea from pre-internet online networks, such as CompuServe, of smaller sub-networks devoted to a particular topic. These user-created communities, "subreddits," quickly set it apart from other social platforms. As Laurence Sangarde-Brown, co-founder of TechTree, wrote: "This design allows users to delve into focused discussions, ask questions, and exchange ideas on a scale unmatched by other platforms." That approach was not enough, though, to kick-start Reddit. The founders had to "fake it until they made it." They seeded the site with fake accounts to make it appear more active. Their efforts paid off, as real users soon flocked to the platform. Another crucial early change was when Reddit merged with Aaron Swartz's Infogami and introduced commenting. This move was vital for laying the groundwork for the site's interactive, community-driven experience. [...]
So, where does Reddit go from here? We'll see. Reddit's legacy is one of transformation: from a scrappy startup to a global hub for conversation, collaboration, and sometimes controversy. As it celebrates 20 years, Reddit remains a testament to how important online communities can be in a world increasingly filled with AI slop. Still, Huffman believes Reddit's true value is coming. In a recent Reddit post, he wrote: "Reddit works because it's human. It's one of the few places online where real people share real opinions. That authenticity is what gives Reddit its value. If we lose trust in that, we lose what makes RedditReddit. Our focus is, and always will be, on keeping Reddit a trusted place for human conversation." Huffman concluded: "The last 20 years have proven how powerful online communities can be — and as we look ahead, I'm even more excited for what the next 20 will bring."
What set Reddit apart from its early rivals was its framework. Instead of one large all-in-one interface, the site borrowed the idea from pre-internet online networks, such as CompuServe, of smaller sub-networks devoted to a particular topic. These user-created communities, "subreddits," quickly set it apart from other social platforms. As Laurence Sangarde-Brown, co-founder of TechTree, wrote: "This design allows users to delve into focused discussions, ask questions, and exchange ideas on a scale unmatched by other platforms." That approach was not enough, though, to kick-start Reddit. The founders had to "fake it until they made it." They seeded the site with fake accounts to make it appear more active. Their efforts paid off, as real users soon flocked to the platform. Another crucial early change was when Reddit merged with Aaron Swartz's Infogami and introduced commenting. This move was vital for laying the groundwork for the site's interactive, community-driven experience. [...]
So, where does Reddit go from here? We'll see. Reddit's legacy is one of transformation: from a scrappy startup to a global hub for conversation, collaboration, and sometimes controversy. As it celebrates 20 years, Reddit remains a testament to how important online communities can be in a world increasingly filled with AI slop. Still, Huffman believes Reddit's true value is coming. In a recent Reddit post, he wrote: "Reddit works because it's human. It's one of the few places online where real people share real opinions. That authenticity is what gives Reddit its value. If we lose trust in that, we lose what makes RedditReddit. Our focus is, and always will be, on keeping Reddit a trusted place for human conversation." Huffman concluded: "The last 20 years have proven how powerful online communities can be — and as we look ahead, I'm even more excited for what the next 20 will bring."
Reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
Reddit once found the idea of deleting any content so antithetical to its purpose that they made it an April Fools Day joke: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Shortly after Aaron Swartz was driven to suicide by the malicious prosecution of Carmen Ortiz, Reddit censored even that page.
Re: Reminder (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm being an asshole because it's to underscore a point about how people like yourself engage with this conversation. You don't even have the basic facts and you mouth off like you're knowledgeable, but you're not. Look at the garbage you've spewed in just a paragraph:
> The prosecution was considering a no jail plea bargain, but MIT would not agree to the deal.
Wrong. MIT didn't WANT Aaron Swartz prosecuted from the get-go. It was Carmen Ortiz who pushed for charges, wanting a desirable conviction under t
Re: Reminder (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: Reminder (Score:2)
Re: Reminder (Score:2)
"Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not."
That's Swartz's lawyer. That's where MIT stood.
And a plea deal the prosecution wanted was six months. This 35 years million dollars crap is manufactured bullshit.
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Re: Reminder (Score:1)
Re: Reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting tired of explaining this to retarded boomers
The generation who lived through the most rapid advances in technology in human history, created the modern computer, the internet, the WWW, the tech sector you rely on both for your income and to provide you with almost everything you need or use today. Meanwhile your generation if it's not writing the AI software and creating the machinery to make yourselves completely irrelevant to society and the functioning of society is using that very software to give your employers all the proof they need that you're not required anymore. And the boomers are the retards?
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Getting tired of explaining this to retarded boomers
The generation who lived through the most rapid advances in technology in human history, created the modern computer, the internet, the WWW, the tech sector you rely on both for your income and to provide you with almost everything you need or use today. Meanwhile your generation if it's not writing the AI software and creating the machinery to make yourselves completely irrelevant to society and the functioning of society is using that very software to give your employers all the proof they need that you're not required anymore. And the boomers are the retards?
And that, ladies and gentlemen is how we got TikTok.
Re: Reminder (Score:2)
You're reading the indictment and coming away with if all the charges stick, with no deal whatsoever, the maximum penalty is blah blah and blah.
That's a hilariously stupid interpretation of how our justice system works, did you use AI for that? Yes you did.
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The weirdest claim in all of it is that MIT would be a party to somebody's else's plea bargain. They wouldn't even be in the room.
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You want to delete your own subreddit? Fuck you! You can make it private and leave, we can give it someone else when we see it fit.
I have nothing against information being free, but when I create a forum on a site, I want also to be able to delete it again. There are also privacy implications to this. And in 20 years, a lot of laws (and overall sentiment) can change, which make it favorable to have the option to delete things.
old again (Score:1)
misdit
Everything after slashdot was trash anyway
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And especially Slashdot.
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Amen
Reddit is Usenet ... (Score:5, Informative)
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mod powertrips are the problem that will bring reddit down.
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some do, some don't - it really depends entirely on the personality of the moderators of any given sub. It's easy enough to avoid the toxic ones.
Why is slashdot so much better ... (Score:4, Funny)
while Reddit is so much more popular???? ... I may have just answered my own question.
(in terms of moderation and quality of content)
Hang on
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Hey, I think you've stumbled onto something there..
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I heard it's gonna be the new slashdot, but I figure one is enough. Probably more than.
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I wanted to check their content but some incel reddit mod IP banned me from Reddit years ago. I never looked back.
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For being the 'front page of the internet' they really love denying people access.
Little subreddit dictators (Score:1, Informative)
banning everyone from their subreddit who doesn't agree with them.
Reddit is nothing more than the sewer of the internet.
Reddit is even worse than that bunch of angry white men at Wikipedia.
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Because the subreddits are the main or only subreddit for ones hobby/sport/lifestyle.
So when the mods of that subreddit are hateful, narrowminded woke cunts, you get banned for not following their narrow view of what you are allowed to say.
Re:Little subreddit dictators (Score:5, Funny)
Bro, no one want to hear your views on gender in /r/beekeeping.
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"Queen" should only mean one thing there.
And that is my point.
Re:Little subreddit dictators (Score:5, Insightful)
Bro, no one want to hear *anyone*'s views on gender in /r/beekeeping.
Indeed so your incessant babbling about "woke" etc in random threads is likely to get you banned. You care, a lot clearly, but most people don't want the noise and flames, so you get banned. I do not feel sorry for you.
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Also, posts like that will get you banned from most subs. There's so many reasons you might have been banned that it's hard to give you specific advice.
Re: Little subreddit dictators (Score:2)
The veneer of civility here is so thin, but perfectly formed, it just really makes the takedown. 9.7/10 (sorry, the Russian judge have you a 7).
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Thankyou :)
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Good faith disagreements can get you banned from a lot of them.
Someone who is prone to falling in line with group think will likely never encounter it but it's real.
LK
Re: Little subreddit dictators (Score:2)
I dunno, my account got permabanned from Reddit for using alts to evade a ban in a specific sub (as per the message sent to me). Except I never had any alts? Or visited/posted/commented in that sub? They got some haywire methods of detecting multiple account makers over there.
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That doesn't surprise me, reddit sucks! I got temp banned because somebody who wasn't a native English speaker misunderstood my comment as being the opposite of what I said and the subreddit mod reported it up (instead of banning me from the subreddit), though it did get reversed on appeal.
They suck in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean it is wrong to let subreddit's self-manage, and it certainly doesn't mean that the neckbeards getting banned for agitating are victims.
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"Good faith disagreements" are not appropriate to bring to somebody else's group meeting.
Protestants should not show up at a Catholic church to warn them they're all going to hell, for example. Even if they really believe and have feelies of compassion.
And in general, no, showing up to do that isn't "in good faith."
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I called it out on another branch of this discussion but I'm talking about things like, someone posts a question that goes something like this:
"Am I The Asshole for declining a second date with the chick I met on Tinder after she told me she was trans?"
Topics like this are ban honeypots because even getting too close to a verboten position will get you banned by Reddit.
I have seen it. I have been threatened with a ban for expressing the opinion that 8 year old children shouldn't be given sex reassignment su
Re: Little subreddit dictators (Score:2)
Very true. Every subreddit has its little dictators. I am presently banned from two subreddits, in each case for posting a view that did not align with the subreddit's usual take on the world. Neither was inflammatory, one was simply posting a documented fact, the other was more speculative.
It's a shame, because it means that you cannot participate in discussions outside of your own internet bubble, where everyone agrees with you anyway.
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Imagine your hobby is getting old C64 machines to do things they were never intended to do, like still work in 2025 and things like that.
Then you get banned from the subreddit for C64 enthusiasts where you used to brainstorm ideas and solutions with other likeminded individuals, all because a mod couldn't handle being told that fun as the C64 was, newer machines are just more fun to play with.
You are now out of that hobby. There's really nowhere else to go to find those same enthusiasts. There's no one to a
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Then you get banned from the subreddit for C64 enthusiasts where you used to brainstorm ideas and solutions with other likeminded individuals, all because a mod couldn't handle being told that fun as the C64 was, newer machines are just more fun to play with.
So you go onto a forum for $HOBBY claiming it's yours then tell people on the forum that they are objectively wrong to enjoy their hobby and your real hobby is actually better.
What possible reason could you have other than trolling?
Your opinion ain't fa
Re:Little subreddit dictators (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sorry that you've never experienced conversations that start on one subject and eventually spread into others. I didn't mean 'join the sub to post this', I meant that there could, for example, be a thread about a specific game on the C64, that eventually evolves into a discussion about the sequels, the spinoffs, the inspiration for another genre etc., and in a side comment you mention that you actually enjoyed the version on the ... I dunno, on the SNES more than the original on the C64. That is enough to set some people off and ban you from the entire sub forever because that was their favorite game ever.
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all because a mod couldn't handle being told that fun as the C64 was, newer machines are just more fun to play with.
Make up your mind. Were you banned for dismissing the hobby of the entire subreddit, or for a comment on a specific port of a specific game? Based on what you first wrote, it sounds very much like you went trolling and got banned. Maybe don't do that? People are not obliged to give you a space to troll neither are they obliged to give you a second chance. They aer also not there to teach you s
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I'm not sure if you're being serious, or making a tongue-in-cheek example of the PROBLEM on Reddit by coming here expecting every reply to be antagonistic rather than conversational.
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I'm sorry that you've never experienced conversations that start on one subject and eventually spread into others.
If you weren't being a "cockwomble" then the conversation veering wouldn't cause you to say something horrible, now would it?
If you don't understand context, don't open your mouth unless you're in safe space for assholes, like slashdot.
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The problem is that mods ban you for just having an opinion or making a joke. It's basically like you are in soviet russia, where anything you say can put you in trouble with the KGB.
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The problem is that mods ban you for just having an opinion or making a joke.
Guys your hobby is shit. Wait why did you ban me? It's just a joke, bro. Lighten up, bro.
It's basically like you are in soviet russia, where anything you say can put you in trouble with the KGB.
Ah yes, private property is now [checks notes] communist.
https://xkcd.com/1357/ [xkcd.com]
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The thing about "jokes" is that they're not portable across cultures, or subcultures.
Lots of things in the human experience are universal; if you achieve deep enough communication with somebody from another culture, there's a huge number of things that will be the same, feelings that will be same, actions that will be the same, etc.
However, humor has been found (by social-psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists) to often not be portable. There are some types of "physical comedy" like Mr Bean that are
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That's some good copium you are taking right now. I mean sure, rewrite reality so I'm "blowing a gasket"if you like. It won't change the reality that most people don't want your trolling in their community. If you want to troll freely, stick to 4chan or slashdot, though you might get down modded here.
If you want a community on a particular topic where flamewars and contentious off topic posts are allowed, go nuts, no one will stop you. Not it's not censorship or even "power tripping" when people would rathe
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Woah there, stop getting emotional and calm down.
Re:Little subreddit dictators (Score:5, Informative)
Because if you want discourse and exchange of ideas, you have to allow both sides to discuss about a topic. otherwise you get a circlejerk echo chamber. Which is what reddit subs are.
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Because if you want discourse and exchange of ideas
The denizens of /r/beekeeping most likely don't want to a free exchange of your ideas about how the earth is flat actually, or how the end is nigh and they must repent. Not everywhere you can post text is a socially acceptable place to post literally anything on your mind and "discuss" it. They probably don't even want your opinions on how beekeeping is boring either, or maybe insufficiently vegan.
And it doesn't matter how meticulously polite you are, nobod
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Just another fanatical cult, where our ideology must be upheld above all.
In the end, they have the same issue all the leftist have, the bad hombres use them to ban people they don't like, with arguments in bad faith and sheer volume of bogus reports.
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Now talk about /r/conservative
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Prefer birds of a feather, eh? Per Pew, liberals ratio conservatives by at least two to one on Reddit.
In comparison, the ratio is now roughly equal on X: now leaning just a little liberal whereas, again per Pew, it used to skew distinctly liberal a few years back.
Reddit mods when they see this (Score:2)
You're banned from Reddit for 6 months.
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I cannot imagine how you got repeatedly banned from various subs.
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You ban from reddit remains a mystery. You have been nothing but unfailingly polite, after all.
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Reddit is cancer and a fucking blight on the web (Score:2, Informative)
It's a stupid echo chamber full of stupid people who are chasing stupid agendas.
It's a place where they will permanently ban you for suggesting that there is any difference of any kind between XX CIS women and XY Trans women.
It's a place where you'll be mod bombed into oblivion for saying that you wouldn't want to date a current or former sex worker.
It's a place where honest discourse goes to die.
Seriously, fuck Reddit.
LK
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Why do half the posters here seem to believe that every venue is the right place to have a frank discussion about your personal opinions on gender. As I set to the other guy, /r/beekeeping isn't interested in your opinions on human chromosomes.
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Are you applying for a Minitrue position or something? An
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What an intellectually dishonest smug [...]
If you're wondering why you were banned, it's also replies like that which would do it.
Presumably the OP is referring to any number of subs related to women, women who want to date women, or other subreddits where that discussion is completely germane
Why would you presume that?
Are you applying for a Minitrue position or something?
It seems that you don't want to have a frank exchange of opinions, after all. I'm beginning to think you simply want to browbeat people
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Presumably the OP is referring to any number of subs related to women, women who want to date women, or other subreddits where that discussion is completely germane, and yet here you are banging on about beekeeping as though it's somehow relevant in the slightest.
Or general relationship subreddits.
Someone will ask "Am I transphobic for not going on a second date after this chick I met on Tinder told me she was trans?"
It'll be a ban honeypot.
LK
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The nuance: certain opinions are not welcomed in certain subreddits. Those opinions are more than welcomed in OTHER subreddits.
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I chose that specific example precisely because it's banned on all of reddit. If you say that there is any difference between XX CIS women and XY Trans women, you'll be banned from Reddit.
Ridiculous, right?
LK
Full of redditards, echo chambers, and ... (Score:3)
... and the occasional decent post.
Sadly the site has been shit for decades.
* ZERO CONTEXT for why something is up-voted or down-voted
* Full of redditards -- people who downvote you just for asking a question
* God forbid you have a _different_ opinion
* Full of echo chambers
* The larger the sub the large the ego of mods with a stick up their ass
* With Google dropping usenet it sadly is the most popular place to go for certain topics
* Under-paid, over-worked mods.
The smaller the sub, usually the better the S:N ratio is.
del.icio.us (Score:2)
I miss del.icio.us.
Reddit, Slashdot, etc, maybe something else sucks (Score:2)
Everybody complains about public forums
Everybody says they suck
Maybe something else sucks around here, like the public. Yeah the public sucks, there's a nice Slashdot title for ya, the public sucks, fuck hope, fuck hope!
Because if it's the fault of all these public forums like Reddit, where are all the people to write and manage these new bright shiny public forums and lead the way?
We don't have people like this in this country. Everybody's at the mall, scratching his
Reddut Sucks, (Score:2)
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Reddit lets local mods have too much power.
Reddit is gonna be Deadit soon (Score:1)