Reddit

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Globe icon of the infobox
Reddit Inc.
Website logo
The front page of the internet
Online community
languages Multilingual , mainly English
operator Advance Publications
editorial staff Steve Huffman
Alexis Ohanian
Registration optional, required for ratings, comments, and submissions
On-line 2005 (currently active)
https://www.reddit.com/

Reddit [ rɛdɪt ] is a social news - aggregator , a website , set on the registered user content or offer can. A piece of content can either consist of a link , a video, an image, a survey or a text contribution. Other users can rate the contributions as positive or negative. The ratings influence the position of the post on the respective Reddit page and start page.

Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman , Alexis Ohanian and Aaron Swartz and has belonged to Condé Nast Verlag since October 31, 2006 . Due to the steady growth, Reddit was spun off into Reddit Inc. on September 6, 2011 and is now, like Condé Nast, subordinate to the media company Advance Publications .

The name Reddit is a play on words. "I read it on Reddit", where "read (in the past tense ) it" and "Reddit" sound the same. The name of the Reddit mascot designed by Ohanian is Snoo , which arose from the suitcase word Snew for “what's new” , an initial idea by Ohanian as a name for Reddit.

overview

Registered users (often also called Redditors ) can post their contributions in individual, so-called subreddits , sorted by topic . The placement of a post is determined both on the general start page and on the individual start page by age, positive and negative comments and the overall so-called "karma result". This means that dozens of different posts appear on the homepage every day. Users can post content either through external links or through their own posts on Reddit. Own posts (also called self-posts ) contain user-generated texts on specific topics or facts. Other users then rate the contributions either with positive ("upvote") or negative ("downvote") criticism ("feedback"). Users can also comment on contributions and rate comments from others. However, the rating points for comments have no effect on the placement of the post. For contributions or comments that have been positively rated by other users, the respective author receives either link-karma for his contribution or comment-karma for his comment.

Subreddits

Reddit is divided into so-called subreddits , which enable the contributions submitted to be sorted by topic. When submitting an article, the user specifies in which subreddit it should appear. If no suitable subreddit is available, registered users can also create their own subreddits. As a registered user, you also have the option of subscribing to subreddits in order to quickly see new contributions. Articles from the selected subreddits will then appear on the homepage. As of December 2011, Reddit hit more than 100,000 subreddits.

IAmA

One of the most famous subreddits is IAmA . In this subreddit, the motto between the users is AMA - Ask me anything . In particular, celebrities and well-known people, including Barack Obama , Bill Gates , Bear Grylls , Deadmau5 , Zach Braff , Neil deGrasse Tyson and others, answer questions from the community here. It is up to the users which questions they want to ask. A schedule on the right side of the subreddit gives an overview of the upcoming celebrity AMAs .

karma

On Reddit, karma is your own reputation. The rating system points the way. If your own contributions and comments are rated positively by other users, the respective karma of the user increases. In contrast, the karma decreases with negative reviews. Posts that only contain their own text and no external link (so-called self-posts ) did not receive any karma points until July 2016. There is a counter for evaluating your own contributions and one for your own comments. An individual rating is derived from the sum of the so-called upvotes , minus the downvotes , for the respective contribution. The karma of the respective user is under his profile name.

Since the rating system is crucial for the ranking of the post, it can sometimes happen that the karma is artificially increased. This is done by creating several fake accounts by a user in order to be able to rate a post positively as quickly as possible. In order to maintain the objectivity within the comments, there is a so-called reddiquette (similar to the netiquette ) that users should adhere to when creating their comments. However, this guideline is not mandatory.

history

Reddit was founded in June 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. The start-up incubator Y Combinator provided them with 100,000 US dollars for the foundation . In order to increase the traffic on the website quickly, both created many fake accounts in order to post links from there. In October 2006, Reddit was bought by Condé-Nast publishers for $ 20 million after the website reached 500,000 page visits per day. In early 2008, Reddit introduced that any user could create their own subreddits. In February 2011, the website reached 1 billion views in a month for the first time and even 1.6 billion in September of the same year. As a result, Reddit was spun off from Condé-Nast-Verlag and continued as reddit.inc .

Open source

On June 17, 2008 it was announced that Reddit would be an open source project from now on . With the exception of the anti-spam area, the complete code and the tools used can be used free of charge on GitHub .

Reddit gave three reasons for doing this. On the one hand, it was assumed that the further development of the website would be faster through the use of open source. On the other hand, the website should be completely transparent to the user. Another reason for this approach was that Reddit only used open source software for their website up to this point and should now also become part of it.

As of September 1, 2017, Reddit is no longer an open source project.

Reddit Premium and Gold

In July 2010, Reddit launched its new Reddit Gold feature after the website's traffic increased massively. Reddit Gold offers users additional paid features. The costs for this are at 3.99 USD per month or 29.99 USD per year.

Users who have purchased Reddit Gold Membership or who have received a donation from another Redditor will also receive the following benefits:

  • Users are shown a trophy on the respective user page.
  • Users can switch off advertising and sponsor links.
  • Users can see twice as many comments as usual at the same time.
  • Users can view up to 100 subreddits and 1,500 comments simultaneously on their own user page.
  • Users get a new comment function to see what's new since their last visit.
  • Users get access to the Friends with Benefits function. Here you get the opportunity to write notes in your friends list.
  • Users can sort saved posts by subreddits and their own categories.
  • Users get access to "The Lounge", a "community" only for Redditors with gold membership.
  • Users can test beta functions.
  • Users receive various special offers from partner companies.

Reddit was giving away a month of Reddit Gold to every user who sent a postcard to the company through September 2016 .

In 2018, Reddit renamed the monthly Reddit Gold subscription to Reddit Premium and added various awards such as Platinum and Silver . Special Community Awards and Mod Awards can also be given. The coins for distributing awards can now also be purchased independently of Reddit Premium .

Economic change

On September 6, 2011, Reddit was spun off from Condé-Nast-Verlag due to its steady growth and reported directly to the parent company Advance Publications as reddit.inc . Reddit justified this move by stating that the website's traffic had skyrocketed over the past five years. In 2006, the website was visited an average of 700,000 times a day; in 2011, this number was reached every 15 minutes on average.

blackout

On January 12, 2012, Reddit decided to participate in a worldwide protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act . As a result of this protest, the website, like many other websites (including Wikipedia ), only displayed a black screen on January 18, 2012 with an explanation of the protest.

User revolt and resignation

Ellen Pao resigned as interim boss on July 10, 2015 after about 8 months. She had fired Victoria Taylor, who took care of the mostly volunteer moderators. Although she had apologized for this personnel decision, a petition from 200,000 users demanded her resignation. Co-founder Steve Huffman is returning to the helm for the time being.

Blocking of 2000 subreddits

In June 2020, Reddit blocked a large number of groups (subreddits) due to a repeated and massive violation of netiquette (forum rules). The groups with the largest number of members were " The_Donald" , in which mainly Donald Trump- related content was shared and which had 790,000 followers, and the group " Chapo Trap House" , a politically left-wing group with 160,000 followers. According to Reddit, hate speech in particular was spread in the closed groups .

politics

On August 29, 2012, US President Barack Obama spoke out on Reddit for re -election with " I am Barack Obama, President of the United States - AMA " (AMA = Ask Me Anything ) during his election campaign. During half an hour he answered the “Redditors” questions. Around 13,000 comments were written within a very short time, so that the high number of hits resulted in a brief total failure of Reddit a little later. Obama's username on Reddit is PresidentObama.

In Russia, access to Reddit was blocked for about one day on August 12, 2015. The reason given is a two-year-old post in which a Reddit user explains in Russian how to grow so-called magic mushrooms .

Since August 13, 2015, access to the watchpeopledie subreddit (roughly: “watch people die”) has been blocked for users with IP addresses belonging to Germany . The Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People has previously informed Reddit about an indexing procedure, as provided for in Section 21 (7) of the Youth Protection Act. In a public statement in the ChillingEffects subreddit, Reddit announced that they have carried out the blocking in order to ensure the continued existence of the overall offer in Germany. Due to over-blocking and the Humor subreddit was temporarily watchpeopledieInside (like: "look people who die inside") locked.

technology

The software behind Reddit was originally written in Common Lisp , but in December 2005 it was rebuilt in the Python programming language . The main reasons for this were the larger selection of program libraries , better performance and more flexible development options. The software also uses a PostgreSQL database.

In January 2009, Reddit announced that the company is now using the JavaScript - class library jQuery work with. At the end of 2009, Reddit decided not to use its own server infrastructure anymore, but to switch to the cloud offering from Amazon Web Services .

Mobile web

In June 2007 the Reddit website was redesigned for mobile use. This mainly concerned visual changes with the help of CSS and a better usability of the website within the mobile browser .

Mobile apps also make it possible to use Reddit quickly and easily on smartphones and tablets . In September 2014 the Reddit AMA app for iOS and Android was released, which enables interviews to be read in question-and-answer style from the / r / IAMA subreddit. In October 2014, the company bought the iOS app Alien Blue , which ended up being the official Reddit app until 2016. A new app was developed from Alien Blue , which was simply called "Reddit" and has been the website's official app since 2016. Alien Blue is no longer being developed and can no longer be downloaded.

Unofficial apps on the Android Market and Apple iOS use the Reddit API . Popular apps for Android are, for example, reddit is fun , Relay for reddit or baconreader .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About reddit. In: reddit.com. Retrieved January 19, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Michael Arrington: Breaking News: Condé Nast / Wired Acquires Reddit. October 31, 2006, accessed May 27, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Erik Martin: what's new on reddit: Independence. In: blog.reddit. September 6, 2011, accessed January 21, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions. What does the name "reddit" mean? In: reddit.com. Retrieved January 19, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions. What is that alien / bug thing? In: reddit.com. Retrieved March 24, 2016 .
  6. ^ Courtney Boyd Myers: The very first digital drafts of the reddit alien. Accessed March 24, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Erik Martin: 2 Billion & Beyond. In: blog.reddit. January 5, 2012, accessed January 21, 2016 .
  8. ^ I am Barack Obama, President of the United States -. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  9. ^ I'm Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AMA. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  10. ↑ I am Bear Grylls. Ask me anything. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  11. ↑ IAMA dead mouse did tours, makes music, plays video games and has a stupid cat. AMA. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  12. ^ I AMA Zach Braff. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  13. ^ I am Neil deGrasse Tyson - AMA. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  14. ↑ I Am A, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal. Sidebar. In: reddit.com/r/IAmA. Accessed January 21, 2016 .
  15. ^ Josh Wardle: Karma for text-posts (AKA self-posts). In: reddit.com. July 19, 2016, accessed August 3, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions. What is that number next to usernames? And what is karma? In: reddit.com. Retrieved January 19, 2016 .
  17. ↑ GamePro, G4TV and VGChartz GamrFeed have been using multiple accounts to spam and manipulate / r / gaming for months. In: reddit.com. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  18. ↑ Reddiquette. In: reddit.com. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  19. ↑ Sherilynn Macale: A rundown of Reddit's history and community. October 14, 2011, accessed May 30, 2016 .
  20. ↑ Steve Huffman: reddit goes open source. In: blog.reddit. June 17, 2008, accessed May 30, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Home. In: reddit / reddit Wiki. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  22. ↑ Steve Huffman: reddit goes open source. In: blog.reddit. June 17, 2008, accessed March 27, 2016 .
  23. ↑ Christopher Slowe: An update on the state of the reddit / reddit and reddit / reddit-mobile repositories. In: Reddit.com. September 1, 2017, accessed on September 2, 2017 .
  24. ↑ reddit gold. Retrieved June 10, 2016 .
  25. ↑ r / goldbenefits - Winding down postcards for gold. Accessed November 4, 2018 .
  26. ↑ r / modnews - Hi r / modnews, some exciting changes coming to Gold (and how you can get involved)! Retrieved May 2, 2020 (American English).
  27. ↑ What are Awards? Retrieved May 2, 2020 .
  28. ↑ Erik Martin: Independence. In: blog.reddit.com. September 6, 2011, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  29. ↑ James Fudge: Reddit Plans SOPA 'Blackout' Protest Jan. 18 (No longer available online.) January 11, 2012, archived from the original on October 10, 2014 ; accessed on June 10, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gamepolitics.com
  30. ↑ Ellen Pao: Resignation, thank you. In: Reddit. July 10, 2015, accessed July 12, 2015 .
  31. ↑ Reddit boss resigned after user revolt. In: ORF.at. July 11, 2015, accessed July 12, 2015 .
  32. ↑ Andrea Chang, Tracey Lien: Ellen Pao resigns as interim CEO of Reddit after week of intense criticism. In: Los Angeles Times . July 10, 2015, accessed July 12, 2015 .
  33. ↑ Mike Isaac: Reddit, Acting Against Hate Speech, Bans 'The_Donald' Subreddit . In: The New York Times . June 29, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed June 29, 2020]).
  34. ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Reddit blocks group with 800,000 Trump supporters - DER SPIEGEL - Netzwelt. Retrieved June 29, 2020 .
  35. ^ Barack Obama : I am Barack Obama, President of the United States - AMA. Retrieved June 10, 2016 .
  36. ↑ Russia blocks Reddit discussion platform. In: sueddeutsche.de. August 13, 2015, accessed August 18, 2015 .
  37. ↑ Markus Böhm: Reddit blocks forum for death videos - exclusively for German users. In: Spiegel Online. August 14, 2015, accessed February 18, 2018 .
  38. ↑ [2015-08-13] IP Blocks. In: reddit.com/r/ChillingEffects. August 13, 2015, accessed February 18, 2018 .
  39. ↑ Reddit is now also censoring / r / watchpeopledieInside for German users. In: reddit.com/r/de. Retrieved February 18, 2018 .
  40. ↑ Steve Huffman: on lisp. In: blog.reddit. December 5, 2006, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  41. ↑ faq. Ned Talk. In: reddit.com. Retrieved June 10, 2016 .
  42. ↑ Chris: reddit now powered by jQuery. In: blog.reddit. January 30, 2009, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  43. ↑ Jeremy, Moving to the Cloud. (No longer available online.) In: blog.reddit. November 10, 2009, archived from the original on April 10, 2016 ; accessed on June 10, 2016 .
  44. ↑ Chris: A better mobile reddit for all. In: blog.reddit. June 9, 2010, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  45. ↑ Announcing the official reddit AMA app. In: blog.reddit. September 2, 2014, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  46. ↑ Greg Kumparak: Reddit Acquires Alien Blue, The Most Popular Unofficial Reddit app. In: techcrunch.com. October 15, 2014, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  47. ↑ ahiggz: A New Chapter: Reddit for iOS. February 18, 2016, accessed January 2, 2017 .
  48. ↑ Bacon Reader. OneLouder Apps, accessed June 10, 2016 .
  49. ↑ Relay. In: AppBrain. Retrieved June 10, 2016 .
  50. ↑ reddit is fun (unofficial). In: AppBrain. Retrieved June 10, 2016 .