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Reddit - The heart of the internet
Main Post: Reddit - The heart of the internet
The Dark Truth About Reddit: From Faking Users To A Billion Dollar Company
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How did two broke college students with a failed business end up creating one of the most popular internet forum ever? The story of Reddit is filled with scandals, lies, money and even death - as Reddit has been involved in countless controversies, including turning against its own users. But let’s dive in behind Reddit's insane history to the billion dollar company that we know of today.
In 2001, Alexis Ohanian enrolled at the University of Virginia to study computer science. His destiny changed when he met his dorm neighbor Steve Huffman, another self-taught programmer majoring in computer science.
The two bonded over video games but Alexis felt behind his peers' skills. Fearing failure, he switched to pre-law despite his passion for coding. As he prepped for the grueling law entrance exam, visions of a monotonous future as a lawyer overwhelmed him. Mid-exam, he walked out and envisioned running his own impactful tech company instead.
Luckily, Steve already had a business idea - a mobile app for ordering food ahead from gas stations or any restaurant to skip the line. Excited, they named it "My Mobile Menu" and devoted their senior year to building the startup.
However, smartphones were still primitive with no app stores. Steve struggled to connect their SMS-based system to restaurants'. Meanwhile, Alexis struggled to sell the vision to restaurants. Their innovative idea was simply too ahead of its time.
As spring break arrived, Alexis and Steve embarked on a 500-mile trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their goal? Seeking help for their struggling business from entrepreneur Paul Graham, who was lecturing at Harvard on "How to Start a Startup."
Steve was a fan of Graham's books and hoped to get one autographed. But Alexis saw an even bigger opportunity. After the lecture, they approached Graham, bought him a drink, and pitched their mobile food ordering app "My Mobile Menu." Surprisingly, Graham liked the idea of eliminating waiting in line for food.
The pair exchanged contacts with Graham and returned to Virginia reinvigorated. Weeks later, Graham emailed about launching a new startup accelerator program called Y Combinator, inviting them to pitch for funding. Though confident, the investor panel couldn't envision their app working with current technology nor saw two college kids having restaurant connections.
Rejected but not dejected, Graham revealed he still believed in Alexis and Steve if they conceived a better idea. Literally getting off the train at the next stop, they brainstormed a new concept that would change everything.
Abandoning the mobile app, Graham advised building something web-based to solve "your problem every morning." By 2005, content flooded the internet from multiple sources needing better aggregation. Sites like Slashdot let users submit articles that moderators rated. Delicious bookmarked popular links.
But Alexis and Steve envisioned an open platform where anyone could share any content for users to upvote or downvote - a platform where content is rated by the people. After tossing names like Oobaloo and 360scope, they landed on "Reddit" - allowing people to simply say "I read it on Reddit."
Graduating in 2005 with a new company name and vision, the founders of Reddit were ready to disrupt how content spreads online.
Armed with $12,000 in funding from Y Combinator, Alexis and Steve moved to Massachusetts to work full-time on their new idea. They spent months operating on little sleep, barely leaving as they built Reddit day and night. However, Paul Graham soon emailed questioning why they hadn't launched yet, pushing them to release a bare-bones beta version immediately.
Unexpectedly, Graham then linked to Reddit on his blog, driving their first 1,000 visitors. Ready or not, Reddit was now live - but missing a crucial element: users.
Alexis tried everything to attract an audience - posting flyers around Boston, asking friends to contribute content, even pitching fellow Y Combinator founders. But without an existing userbase, there was little content.
Desperate for traction, Alexis and Steve resorted to creating hundreds of fake accounts to populate Reddit with posts, giving the illusion of an active community. "Reddit's no fun if the page is blank," Alexis rationalized their moves.
At first, there was no evident impact until they started noticing unfamiliar usernames joining the platform. By summer's end, Reddit had amassed over 12,000 daily users.
However, the homepage was simply a jumble of random links voted to the top with no categorization system. This sparked Alexis and Steve's first major clash - Alexis wanted tags for organization, but Steve opposed subjective labeling concerns.
Their compromise? Separate "subreddit" sections for every interest, becoming Reddit's backbone. The first was the not-safe-for-work subreddit, followed by science, programming, politics and many more niche communities united on one novel platform.
With this innovative structure, Reddit's prospects were looking very bright - especially after crossing paths with a pivotal new player, Aaron Swartz.
At just 18 years old, Aaron Swartz was a talented programmer also backed by Y Combinator for his startup Infogami, that built web development tools. However, Infogami struggled - Aaron hadn't launched yet and found himself broke, homeless and partnerless. Paul Graham saw Aaron's potential to help with developing Reddit and suggested merging companies.
Late 2005, around 6 months after Reddit's launch, Infogami merged into a new parent company Not A Bug Inc with Reddit. Steve, Alexis and Aaron each owned 24% of Reddit, with Paul at 7% and the rest reserved.
Alexis and Steve welcomed Aaron's coding skills. As users grew, Reddit added comment sections for discussions, plus a "karma" points system incentivizing quality contributions. The trio collaborated well initially.
However, underlying tensions brewed. Alexis and Steve felt it unfair Aaron publicly called himself a Reddit co-founder when he joined 6 months after their idea's inception. This founder friction intensified as Reddit caught the attention of media giant Condé Nast.
The multi-billion dollar publisher of Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair sought to acquire the rapidly growing, user-generated Reddit to expand digitally after acquiring Wired. Though not looking to sell their 1-year-old startup yet, the 23, 22 and 19-year-old founders entertained Condé Nast's millions.
After tense negotiations, one hurdle remained - Aaron voicing concerns over a massive corporation controlling the free user-driven platform. His antics like secretly tweaking contracts caused frustration until Steve warned him not to jeopardize the deal.
Relenting, Condé Nast acquired Reddit for around $10-20 million, making the founders overnight millionaires. Though required to remain for 3 more years, they operated independently with resources to grow Reddit. What seemed like a dream quickly turned into a nightmare as the Reddit founders' story took a dark twist.
Everyone worked hard to impress Condé Nast, Reddit's new corporate owners - except Aaron. He had envisioned Reddit as a voice for the people against big governments and corporations. So being owned by a massive media company felt like a bad cultural fit.
Aaron rarely showed up to the office, even blogging about hating the "grey walls, grey desks, grey noise". Finally in January 2007, Alexis, Steve and Condé Nast leadership fired the problematic Aaron.
Without him, the team continued developing Reddit, rethinking core features.
Until 2008, only employees could create new topic subreddits despite increasing user requests. Their solution? Allowing any user to make their own subreddit.
This brilliant move spawned subreddits for every niche interest imaginable, from niche bands to financial advice to bizarre meme topics like "BreadStapleToTrees" with over 300,000 members. Users could now find or create communities for any interest.
Another clever tactic was to let the most active users moderate the subreddits they created for free.
Reddit's popularity soared to over 2 million users and 10,000+ subreddits by late 2008. Yet the company struggled to monetize this traffic.
So despite explosive growth, Reddit remained unprofitable, merely introducing paid memberships and awards. Meanwhile, tensions boiled over between Alexis and Steve - the former grieving his late mother, accusing Steve of mismanagement while Steve felt Alexis schemed behind his back. Sharing an apartment worsened their explosive office fights.
By 2009 when their Condé Nast contracts expired, the fractured co-founders both abandoned Reddit just as a new Congressional bill threatened the site's very existence.
In 2011, Congress proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would hold platforms like Reddit responsible for all user-generated content on their sites - even content they didn't publish themselves. For a site with millions of users freely posting, copyright owners could sue Reddit, potentially leading to massive fines, legal fees or even a shutdown.
At the time, Reddit had over 46 million users but only 20 employees, making it impossible to monitor all content for compliance. Reddit publicly declared SOPA an "all-out war against the internet" they wouldn't go down without a fight.
Many tech giants like Google and Wikipedia also lobbied against the law amid intense public backlash. On January 18, 2012, Reddit took the dramatic step of shutting down for 12 hours in protest, stating in a blog post: "We wouldn't do this if we didn't believe this legislation and the forces behind it were a serious threat to Reddit and the internet as we know it."
Days later, Congress abandoned SOPA after succumbing to public pressure. One key leader emerging from this internet freedom battle was none other than Aaron Swartz. After leaving Reddit, he had become an activist fighting internet censorship and campaigning for an open internet.
But his activism landed him in serious legal trouble in 2011 when arrested for illegally downloading millions of academic journals from MIT to make them freely accessible online. He faced up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
Aaron was offered a plea deal of just 6 months if he admitted guilty, however he rejects it to avoid being a lifelong felon. As his case lingered, the depressed Aaron became isolated, not wanting to burden others. Tragically, his girlfriend found him dead by suicide weeks before the trial.
Tributes poured in across the internet, hailing Aaron as using "his prodigious skills not to enrich himself, but to make the internet and world a fairer, better place." Though inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame for co-founding Reddit and creating RSS feeds and Creative Commons licenses, Aaron's pivotal role has largely been erased from Reddit's official history.
In March 2012, Yishan Wang from PayPal became Reddit's new CEO as the site reached billions of monthly pageviews and gained cultural relevance. Even President Barack Obama did an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") Q&A on the site's popular subreddit.
However, this immense growth caused problems. Since anyone could create subreddits, many disturbing communities proliferated from watching people die to cannibalism forums. Reddit's anonymity made it ripe for abuse by extremists, hate speech, and controversies.
One tragic example followed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings killing 3 and injuring hundreds. A "FindBostonBombers" subreddit emerged with thousands speculating and sharing unauthorized personal information against site rules. They falsely accused missing student Sunil Tripathi based on resemblance, leading to vicious harassment of his grieving family before authorities identified the true perpetrators.
When Tripathi's body was discovered on April 23, news outlets blamed Reddit's witch-hunt. As the userbase swelled into the millions, pressure mounted on executives like Yishan to crack down on offensive subreddits. Though believing "we will not ban legal content even if odious," he eventually prohibited forums like "BeatingWomen" with graphic violence.
By 2014, conflicting views on content moderation led Yishan to resign after just two years, citing stress from the internal conflicts and negative publicity scaring investors amidst sexism claims. Ellen Pao soon replaced him as CEO to address Reddit's escalating controversies.
Ellen Pao, formerly Reddit's VP known for suing a past employer over gender discrimination, succeeded Yishan as CEO in 2014. Her hiring aimed to rehabilitate Reddit's concerning reputation.
Around this time, co-founder Alexis Ohanian also returned as executive chairman, hoping to steer Reddit clear of controversies. Shortly after, Pao implemented stricter anti-harassment policies and banned some of the most offensive subreddits.
While some lauded her efforts to clean up Reddit, many core users considered it censorship - especially after Pao stated: "We are not a completely free speech platform." Matters escalated when she fired beloved employee Victoria Taylor, who coordinated high-profile AMAs. In protest, moderators shut down hundreds of subreddits, effectively blacking out the site.
With over 160,000 petitions calling for her removal, Pao resigned after just 7 months amid Reddit's tailspin and uncertain future. The company desperately needed stable leadership after cycling through 3 CEOs in under a year.
Offering a glimmer of hope, co-founder Steve Huffman returned as CEO in 2015 alongside Ohanian's renewed involvement. The original founders' comeback reignited optimism, with design upgrades, mobile apps, and clearer direction initially.
However, in 2016 Huffman himself sparked an ethics scandal. After insulting comments on the controversial "The_Donald" subreddit, he abused admin privileges to edit them, redirecting insults towards the subreddit's moderators instead. Though calling it "trolling the trolls," many felt an admin editing user posts broke trust in Reddit's freedom and openness - severely damaging Huffman's credibility.
In April 2023, Reddit announced it would start charging to access its API - the interface allowing third-party apps and websites to pull data from Reddit. One of the most popular alternative apps was Apollo, offering a different browsing experience by freely accessing Reddit's data when the API was free.
However, Reddit's new pricing of 24 cents per 1,000 API requests meant Apollo estimated yearly costs over $20 million - forcing the beloved third-party app to shut down. Many moderator tools relying on Reddit's API to provide enhanced functionality beyond Reddit's official app were also hit with massive unexpected bills.
Many in the community felt the exorbitant pricing and lack of warning suggested Reddit deliberately aimed to kill competitor apps, not giving developers time to adapt. Outraged moderators and developers grouped together, staging a blackout where over 7,000 subreddits including major communities like r/AskReddit went dark simultaneously to protest the API charges.
With huge portions of Reddit inaccessible, the company lost substantial ad revenue during one of the biggest online protests ever. Many thought this backlash would force Reddit to rescind the changes. However, since the blackout stated a hard 48-hour timeline, Reddit simply waited it out despite some subreddits staying private longer until threatened with moderator bans.
Post-blackout, animosity towards Reddit's leadership like CEO Steve Huffman has intensified. However, Reddit argued the monetization move was necessary, as the company remains unprofitable while third-parties freely integrated Reddit's entire infrastructure and content without generating any income for Reddit itself.
While Reddit's position is defensible from a business perspective, most agree better foresight like improving their official app with requested features could have avoided controversy. Nonetheless, Reddit achieved its API paywall aims - but at the cost of worsening tensions with its very own community.
Despite nearly 20 years online and around 430 million monthly users as of 2023, Reddit incredibly still operates at a loss and has never turned a profit. However, Reddit's collective community has managed to accomplish some incredible feats.
Users have raised massive amounts for charities and orphanages, organized the world's largest secret Santa gift exchange, and created millions of connections through niche interest communities. Reddit is undeniably useful too - its threads frequently appear as top Google results for inquiries.
But no event demonstrated Reddit's community power quite like the 2021 GameStop stock frenzy. Amateur traders on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit banded together against hedge funds betting on GameStop's decline. Redditors began purchasing the struggling company's shares en masse, driving its stock price from under $3 to an astonishing $483 peak.
This monumental short squeeze caused multi-billion losses for major Wall Street firms, while making numerous Redditors overnight millionaires simply by clinging together. While Reddit itself has yet to solve profitability, one thing remains clear - the website's most powerful asset and liability is its vast unified user base.
Despite the controversies and roller coaster ride detailed in Reddit's story, the site's populist underpinnings and harnessed collective continue redefining what an online community can achieve, for better or worse. Reddit's unconventional journey is far from over.
Top Comment: The story of Reddit is filled with scandals, lies, money and even death - as Reddit has been involved in countless controversies, including turning against its own users. But let’s dive in behind Reddit's insane history to the billion dollar company that we know of today.
Reddit is an American company.
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Some of you are still using Reddit. I highly suggest you to migrate to a federalized platform and open source known as Lemmy. If you couldn't migrate for some reasons, the best you can do is to have an ad blocker. If you block the ads, Reddit wouldn't receive a revenue.
Top Comment: Some of you are still using Reddit. All people who read your post use reddit.
Thoughts on “Company”?
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I saw the touring production this week. There were things I liked about it, but overall felt slow and I kept waiting for something more. At intermission I overheard a lot of people saying similar things.
Top Comment: I think knowing it’s more of a series of vignettes with an overarching theme and character development before you see it is helpful context Like Cats
Is “Company” good? : r/Broadway
Main Post: Is “Company” good? : r/Broadway
Not sure I understand the value of Reddit as a publicly traded company?
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Reddit has been around for a very longtime, since 2005 as a matter of fact, and yet all this time... it has never been profitable.
I see that Reddit's stock (ticker: RDDT) is up 18.48% at the time of posting since its initial public offering, and after perusing the internet and this sub-Reddit in particular, I noticed that a lot of people have a lot of hope that for some reason, Reddit is just all of a sudden going to start making a profit soon to justify its kind of wacky current valuation.
I know most of you are living in this current environment like me, and think 20 plus valuation multiples are the norm, but sadly... they are not. Especially for a company like Reddit, that keeps on creating and scrapping different ways to become profitable.
Besides the management of the company being completely greedy and incapable of doing their jobs, I would like to point out a few of their past and current failures to profitability:
- Reddit has and always will be a place for people to express themselves anonymously, the key word there being anonymous, so if they someday decide to take that away from us users in the pursuit of profits, I could see half if not more abandoning the platform entirely.
- Most of us power users still use "Old Reddit", because the "New Reddit" looks, feels, and operates like total crap. Oh, and the telephone application, assuming it's working, is total crap as well. Without converting us, they have no chance of making money off of us, which makes me sadly think that the board of directors will eventually make the call to end "Old Reddit".
- Coins were fun, and we were able to earn them without putting our credit cards into the Reddit system, thanks to other generous Redditors awarding our content, which some awards came attached with the gift of Reddit Coins... which again were awesome! We would use these coins to purchase awards for other users, and the pay it forward effectiveness was second to none, and really made me feel good. Sadly... this all got scrapped.
- Fast forward a little while after awards and coins were gone, and then we get the much hated "super upvote" that nobody asked for. These things literally have to be paid for one transaction at a time, and I believe the cheapest "super upvote" is $1.99. Besides most Redditors not wanting to give up their anonymity, who is going to make 10's of 100's of transactions a day on their credit cards just to award their favorite content creators?
- Then they created the contributor program, which totally forces Reddit users to give up their anonymity assuming they want to capitalize on this new pay for content model. First though, you have to qualify, and I will let you go look at the requirements for qualification, but I could assure you... most of us will never qualify, and even if we do, we'd make like $4.00 a month, and won't get paid out until we meet a certain threshold no doubt.
- Then recently, Reddit and the team decided to bring back awards... well like 20 of the 1,000's that used to exist anyway and married them into their new created contributor program. So, with this means is that if you're not a contributor, which again you would have to give up your anonymity and pass the gauntlet of qualifying to become a contributor, you get nothing at all for your rewards. Why would anyone pay Reddit for awards that only really help them? At least before some of the rewards came along with free Reddit Premium subscriptions or Reddit Coins, but now... they do nothing for "non-contributors", so who cares?
Anyway, that's all I got for now. I really love Reddit, but sadly, whenever companies go public, they tend to go full regard, which makes me sad... because soon we may lose our beloved Reddit due to the pursuit of year over year gains.
Are there any positives to any of this, because I would really like to hear what they are in the comments... thanks!
Top Comment: User Report | Total Submissions | 10 | First Seen In WSB | 1 year ago | Total Comments | 2393 | Previous Best DD | Account Age | 1 year Join WSB Discord
What is the best company you ever worked for?
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What made it the best?
Top Comment: My community college. It was the only company with a healthy work culture. I was a college student, so they were student jobs. It was the only time managers cared about me and made good business decisions.
Can anyone explain what is Reddit and how it works ?
Main Post: Can anyone explain what is Reddit and how it works ?
Top Comment: Welcome to r/NewToReddit , u/Wiz_Johnny ! Thanks for posting. Someone will be along to help you shortly. If you're new, check out our "General Guide to Reddit and Karma" Wiki page version or Mobile friendly post version , it explains how to get started on Reddit; including information on karma, navigation, and more. You might also like to check out our wiki index and FAQ . While you wait for assistance, browsing through some recent posts, or typing a query into the search bar at the top of the page, may help you find your answer. On our sister community r/LearnToReddit you can find guides on posting, commenting, formatting, flairs, and can practice those things too! Once you get some answers, don’t forget to engage and ask any additional questions you have! Please let us know how you found us! - Click here to fill out our one question survey Thank you! :) Was this helpful? You can comment "Thanks, AutoMod" or "Good job, AutoMod" to thank me if it was! I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Reddit for Business
Main Post: Reddit for Business
Consider who owns Reddit and then ask yourself….
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Am I being lied to ? What’s not allowed to be said on here ? Who gives anyone the right to block or censor ? How does information being censored or blocked keep me from knowing valuable information in order to control me ?
"In 2011, Reddit was fully transferred to the ownership of Advance Publications, which is the parent company of Condé Nast.
Advance Publications is a prominent media company that has holdings in several industries, including cable television, newspapers, and magazines.
Through its holding companies, Advance Publications has significant ownership in companies such as Charter Communications, Discovery, and Condé Nast. Reddit is one of its more prominent digital media holdings.
The acquisition of Reddit by Advance Publications had a significant impact on the platform. The company has been instrumental in providing the resources necessary for the platform to expand and evolve.
Under its ownership, Reddit has continued to grow into one of the largest social media platforms on the web."
If you think your tv cable news is telling you the truth or allowing anyone on it to tell you the truth, then you might think you’re getting an accurate depiction of society and some kind of truth here on Reddit. But you are not. We live in a country ran by corporations that do not want certain narratives being shown for what they are, false and misleading, and purely disinformation. Your tv or some of us like to call it “the dumb box”, has been pedaling lies about wars and politics your entire lives. Reddit is no different. Just like Boomers who get their info from Fox or CNN, Millennials have their version of corporate owned lies as well, it’s called social media. The majority of what I see in this group is careful manipulation and the whole way Reddit interacts with the up vote down vote exists to keep you in the group.
Anyone see that video of the girl on the elevator and they did an experiment where they had a group get on and all face the opposite way to see if she would turn around even thought she was facing the correct way ? Yea, thats reddit.
Top Comment: It's hard to understand people who call msm fake or think they are always lying to you. For some reason they hear a opinion and confuse it for the news. Or they watch a news program and again confuse that with "the news" While all have somewhat a Bias. Where some stories are promoted over others. Only on the right. Will they completely misinform, ignore, or play victim to a event that should be apart of the news. The news bias toward the left. Might not tell the story every ten minutes. But they will at least tell it. Which comes back to your secondary point about reddit. I agree. Somewhat. As the manipulation of the up/down arrows, the Karma stuff, is made for the mods and the more connected to get there point shown and at the top of all opinions. Any system that can be manipulated to favor those that know how to manipulate it. Is indeed rigged.