American social news aggregation website and discussion portal From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reddit (/ˌrɛˈdɪt/) is a website where online users share links to online articles and other media.
 Logo used since November 2023 | |
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
Type of site | Social news |
| Available in | Multilingual[notes 1][1] |
| Founded | June 23, 2005[2] |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| No. of locations | 5 |
| Area served | Worldwide, except for Indonesia (without DNS) and China |
| Owner | Advance Publications (30%)[3] Tencent (5%)[4] |
| Founder(s) |
|
| Key people | |
| Industry | |
| Employees | 2,000 (June 2023)[5] |
| Parent | Reddit Inc. |
| URL |
|
| Advertising | Banner ads and promoted links |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional[notes 2] |
| Users | 70 million (Oct 2023) daily active users[6] |
| Current status | Active |
| Written in | |
Overview
Reddit is a forum consisting of user-generated content and discussion boards. It is organized into subreddits, communities within which discussions take place. The links being shared can be voted on, while links with the highest number of votes are shown on the front page, sometimes known as the instant feed, of the forum.
History
Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and is also available in other languages. Some Reddit users call themselves redditors, while subreddit moderators mods.[8] Subreddits are directed towards all sort of things, like education, being funny, cute pictures of animals, internet memes etc.[9]
Subreddits
Discussions on Reddit are organized into user-created areas of interest called "subreddits", with individual moderators (any user can be one) holding sweeping powers to ban users and dictate content with a range of tools, particularly automated filters.[10]
Controversies
Reddit has been a subject of controversy as it has many subreddits run by those distributing disinformation and explicit materials, including subreddits r/Creepshots, r/jailbait, and r/greenandpleasant.[11][12] Reddit has also been long been criticized for uncontrolled antisemitism.[13] Antisemites, especially Holocaust deniers,[14] across the political spectrum are active on Reddit.[13]
On February 20, 2025, independent journalists announced their findings that over 110 subreddits were controlled by around 30 users who took advantage of the forum's loopholes to systematically distribute antisemitic disinformation for terrorist groups.[10][15] The methods involve "vote brigading, subreddit moderation, and content manipulation".[10]
Reportedly, the compromised subreddits include r/Documentaries (20M members), r/therewasanattempt (7.2M), r/PublicFreakout (4.7M), r/Fauxmoi (4.3M), r/MorbidReality (1.1M), r/ToiletPaperUSA (440K), r/Thatsactuallyverycool (277K), r/Palestine (270K), r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM (184K) and r/boringdystopia (94K),[10] from which misinformation was funnelled to smaller subreddits and beyond Reddit to influence public opinion,[10] while alerts to the company were repeatedly ignored.[10]
Notes
- The site's display interface is available in several common languages, but most of its user-submitted content is written in English with no built-in translation feature. Individual subreddits may opt to cater to a specific language, only allowing posts and comments to be in that language.
- Reddit can be viewed without an account but registration is required to submit, comment or vote. Registration is also occasionally required to view posts marked as Not safe for work (NSFW).
- Previously written in Lisp, then rewritten in Python in 2005.
References
Wikiwand - on
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