Creating another self-identification profile on the Internet has now become the norm of many individuals in 2020. Social media platforms gather a variety of information from its users making digital marketing, social profiling, etc. easier. Like many other social media platforms nowadays, Reddit is a user-generated content platform. When founded in 2005 by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, two American college students, Reddit’s creators imagined a utopic platform where users from all around the world, known as “redditors” would vote on content from facts to fiction. However, through time, this platform has shifted in multiple ways as it becomes easier for extremist views and content to become viral. The aim of this analysis is to observe how user-generated content platform such as Reddit affects politics, economics and social values through algorithms, self-moderation, and awarding popularity.
Upon creating a profile, Reddit asks for an email, choosing a username and a password and completing a reCAPTCHA “I’m not a robot” form. During this process, Reddit gives you username suggestions for you to make it easier in creating your personal account. Next, it lets you find communities by topics in which you would be interested in. Reddit is filled with interest-based communities, offering content for everyone around the world. Reddit suggests that you join at least 5 communities in order for you to take the most advantage of their platform. Communities go by subject categories such as; r/footballhighlights, r/Tinder, r/qotsa, r/Music, r/personalfinance, and so on. Each community features a short description of what it is as well as the amount of members in it. A very interesting aspect of this step in creating an account is Reddit will not only show you communities in categories of Art, Animals, DIY, Entertainement, Fashion, Food, and so on, it will also feature a “Just For You” category when you just created your account. It is very odd for a social media platform to be able to give you recommendations of communities prior to asking the user about his/her personal interests, location, gender, age, education, etc. Not only does it give you a complete list of recommendations just for you, it also automatically joins you to at least five. In order for you to not take part of these 5 communities, you have to manually remove yourself from these choices. For the purpose of this analysis, I personally joined an average of 40 communities from various fields such as politics, news, music, art, health, finance, memes, films, etc. Reddit then, asks you to confirm your email address to ensure you don’t lose access to your account. You can finally start enjoying the platform.
On Reddit, there are multiple functionalities to take advantage of. Like most social media platforms, you can customize your personal profile by changing your avatar and banner picture, display name, adding an “about yourself” description, the visibility of your personal content whether public or private, etc. On Reddit, unlike Facebook or Instagram, the user has the liberty to decide if they want to be shown on communities they follow or not on their profile. Another major difference to any other social media platform is the functionality; NSFW. NSFW stands for “Not Safe For Work” which basically means that content labeled as NSFW is content that may contain nudity, pornography, profanity or inappropriate content for those under 18. It is important to understand that not only does Reddit allow that kind of content, it is through the hands of the users to moderate their own content. Not only this platform is user-generated, it is also user-moderated to a certain level. In other words, a user that publishes nudity can tag NSFW so their content is blurry and revoked from access to any profile who’s adult content view setting is not on. If a user enables to view adult and NSFW content in their feed settings, they will click on the blurry content and then see what’s hidden. However, if a user posts NSFW worthy content, but does not label that content as NSFW, their picture might or might not be deleted by the community. This is something that happens mostly in subcommunities which are communities managed by other Reddit users and moderators. Reddit sends to every new user a brief description of what the platform is with a Content Policy document. However, unlike other social media platforms, Reddit doesn’t request the user to agree to those terms and conditions. The Content Policy page will let users know about what is expected from users, unwelcome content and prohibited behavior. They have a section where enforcement is explained. Reddit enforces rules through different ways; “asking you nicely to knock it off, asking you less nicely, temporary or permanent suspension of accounts, removal of privileges, removal of content, banning of Reddit communities.” (Reddit, 2020). Its moderation within communities is self-moderated, like mentioned before. Reddit explains that “individual communities on Reddit may have their own rules in addition to ours and their own moderators to enforce them. Reddit provides tolls to aid moderators but does not prescribe their usage.” (Reddit, 2020). Reddit’s method of regulation challenges how content accessibility is regulated. When comparing Reddit to Instagram for example, nudity in social contexts of queerness, female hyper sexualization and feminism, Reddit unlike Instagram permits viewers to have access to content that Instagram for instance, would delete and shadow ban or completely delete an account. This questions the access to information and self-expression found in social media. It questions how social media platforms regulate their content based on different social values.
While Reddit gives access to a wider variety of topics, its algorithm changes from other platforms. It is nothing new to hear that social media platforms distribute and control a user’s feed based on interests which are based on engagement, gender, age and location. Because Reddit allows you to join communities, its self-made platform makes user control their feed algorithm based on subject. Dijck explains how algorithms on different social media platforms such as Flickr create algorithms “connecting data derived from profiles, cross-refencing, and tagging on its site that resulted in selective placement of ads next to searched content” (Djick, 98). Reddit allows its users to limit its content to the communities they have joined which accentuates subcommunities which can lead to hatred and misinformation, ultimately shaping politic views. Not only do communities influence this platform’s algorithm, users can vote on a comment or post. Comments and posts can be upvoted or downvoted, resulting in having the most “interesting” (as Reddit states it) content on the top. Reddit claims that the most upvoted comment or post is the most interesting. This puts upfront easier ways to manipulate the media of mass as hate speech and misinformation can become viral instantly and promoted to a variety of users. This use of voting questions the algorithms as users from all around the world have access to political news. While access to information is always positive, to a certain extent, these communication exchanges about politics can easily become exchanges challenging social values and norms from a country to another.
While voting is a big feature that enables popularity gain on the platform, another feature called “coins” is available. “Coins are virtual good you can use to award exemplary posts or comments. Support Reddit and encourage your favorite contributors to keep making Reddit better” (Reddit, 2020). With coins, you can buy awards that not only award a post or comment but also grant the honoree special bonuses. A Silver Award shows a silver award on the post or comment chosen. This costs 100 coins. The Gold Award gives the recipient a week of Reddit Premium (including 100 coins) and shows a Gold Award on the post or comment. This costs 500 coins. Finally, the Platinum Award gives the recipient a month of Reddit Premium, (including 700 coins), and shows a Platinum Award on the post or comment chosen. This costs 1800 coins. In order for someone to have coins on Reddit, the user must buy those with real money. $5.99 will get you 1800 coins, $1.99 will get you 500 coins, $3.99 will get you 1100 coins, $19.99 will get you 7200 coins and so on. You can even buy 40 000 coins for $99.99 (see annex 1). This monetization of award questions the economic values this platform puts forward. While it being a free access platform, it encourages social economics within its structure. Similarities of economic issues arise in different platforms such as Twitter for example. Twitter is known to have users buying through a third-party company such as Devumi (see annex 2), followers and engagement in exchange of money value, bringing more traffic to their content. Bringing money not only through advertising like in Reddit, Facebook and Instagram where you can boost content with sponsored features, you can now pay to become more influential while gaining popularity and traffic on your content. This questions the ethical background of money and how users become people of influence. It is very interesting to understand how money is valued on this platform as Reddit doesn’t really allow its viewers about selling a service especially in the NSFW communities. While doing research on economic issues in this platform, the sex industry is one that brought the most attention. Because Reddit allows sharing NSFW content, it brings communities of people wanting to offer their services. However, Reddit doesn’t allow users to explicitly state as a headline that they are offering services related to that field. Selling anything on Reddit basically becomes unclear as it changes the ways people communicate for these purposes. It enhances private communication through the private messenger feature. This brings the questions about private messaging regulations. Should social media platforms like Reddit be stricter about private messaging? Does this go against free-speech and challenge our liberty of communicating with others? Is censorship of speech too drastic? Another interesting feature is the chat room which allows users to chat in a general chatroom, keeping it sfw and friendly. To have access to that type of communication service, you must be on Reddit for 30+ days. This is very interesting as it limits a user’s access to take part in the conversation. Another feature that limits viewers to take part into conversations and communities is the karma feature, which does not have a value outside of Reddit. However, some subcommunities will not accept people under a certain amount of karma. Users can buy people to upvote their profile’s content and comment ultimately giving them good karma. This enhances social economic structures into the platform as users with higher money values become granted certain privileges other people from minorities do not have.
It is clear that even if Reddit is a platform of free access and free speech as its core, it still encourages economic ecosystems within its platform and challenges how society shares and brings forward issues about politics, economics and social topics. Social media platforms will always have a type of censorship and algorithmic controlled model which influence our ways of seeing communication ethics. Reddit is not an exception to the cause.
Annexe 1
Annexe 2
References
Confessore, N., Dance, G. J. X., Harris, R., & Hansen, M. (2018). The Follower Factory. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html
Devumi. 2016, https://devumi.top. Accessed 20 February 2020.
Dijck, J. van. (2013). Disassembling Platforms, Reassembling Society. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 24–44). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Reddit. 2005, https://www.reddit.com. Accessed 20 February 2020.
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