Steve Huffman was on his couch when Reddit mutinied. Huffman had co-founded the popular news-ranking site with Alexis Ohanian in 2005 and left in 2009 after selling it to Condé Nast. In the years since, he had watched from afar with a mix of pride, as the site grew into the 11th largest in the U.S.; remorse, for selling too early; and frustration, as Reddit failed to mature and was repeatedly wracked by disruptive forces. Reddit is, above all, a collection of nearly 10,000 bulletin boards called sub-Reddits, which range from the general, like Politics and Technology and Food, to the more particular, like one called Whalebait, where people post snapshots of everyone’s favorite cetacean. Users can vote posts up or down, and through crowd curation the most favored items ascend to Reddit’s front page. In this way, the site has become the web’s foremost meme engine, the place where things go viral, and with 200 million regular visitors, it is able to unblushingly call itself “the front page of the internet.”
But more than other user-generated sites, such as YouTube and Wikipedia, Reddit over the years has developed a culture that can at times be untamable. It is one that venerates anonymity and free speech and the idea that you can find your tribe, however small and marginalized, within the site, and it is reflected in the company’s power structure: The number of people the site employs is dwarfed by the horde of moderators who voluntarily tend to the individual sub-Reddits and make the whole thing run.
This story is from the October 5–18, 2015 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 5–18, 2015 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.
