Know Everything about Reddit


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What is Reddit?

If you tend to spend maximum hours online, you probably might have heard about Reddit. There's a high probability that online users know about it. If you haven't heard, then this article is for you to discover the unknown term 'Reddit' to the fullest.

So, what exactly is Reddit? Well, it is a social news platform where users are allowed to submit posts, discuss and upvote or downvote based on if they like it or not. If a post gets maximum upvotes then it climbs up the Reddit ranking so that more people can access it.

Actually, Reddit is a community - determined collection of wide topic contents including videos, photos, links and text - based posts.

When Was Reddit Launched?

Reddit, an American social news website was founded by Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanianand Aaron Swartz on June 23, 2005. It was acquired in October 2006 by Condé Nast Publications. In 2011, it became an independent subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent company, Advance Publications.

But in 2012, reddit was again formed into a re-incorporated independent entity with its own board and control of its own finances, hired a new CEO and brought back co-founder Alexis Ohanian to serve on the board. It can be said that reddit is a “part-sibling-once-removed” of Condé Nast.

How Is Reddit Designed?

Reddit is sub divided into more than a million communities known as “subreddits,” which cover a variety of topics such as politics, news, science, movies, video games, music, books, fitness, cooking, memes, pets and so on.

The name of each subreddit begins with /r/, which is part of the URL that Reddit uses. For example, /r/ipl is a subreddit where people talk about the Indian Premier league, while /r/fifa is a subreddit for people to discuss world football. These are straightforward subreddits, but sometimes, they can get weird, such as /r/birdswitharms, a subreddit devoted to pictures of birds… with arms.

The homepage of reddit shows you various posts that are currently trending on the site, pulled from a variety of subreddits. You can sort these posts by clicking one of the icons on the ribbon menu located underneath the Create Post text box. You can create subreddits, provided you meet some criteria.

Firstly, you must have a reddit account, it should be minimal 30 days old and must be relatively active, and have earned minimum number of 'karma' points as a result of that activity. The exact required number of karmas are not mentioned, but it is known only to reddit.

Subreddits are managed by moderators, volunteers who can change, remake and edit the appearance of a particular subreddit, decide what types of content are allowed, and even remove posts or content or ban users from the subreddit.

Reddit as a whole is governed by the admins, employees of Reddit. They have actual control of the site, including the ability to strip moderators of their privileges and even ban entire subreddits from the site. For example, in June 2020, it banned hundreds of subreddits including its largest pro-Trump message board (known as a subreddit), r/The Donald, amid hate speech crackdown.

Reddit has its own language. Redditors use abbreviations such as OP, TIL, IAmA, and AMA. OP stands for “original poster” in a thread, while TIL means “today I learned”. Both IAmA and AMA refer to Reddit’s most popular feature: Ask Me Anything thread. In fact, reddit is a cloud forum where people belonging to different regions, countries meet, share stuffs and talk to one another.

Reddit has grown to become a popular hub for many topics, both good, bad, and niche. And the reddit community has also taken important steps to make the site more inclusive by eliminating explicit content from its public homepage.

You can support reddit by purchasing Reddit premium, the site's membership program for $6 per month.

Written by – Mickel Lepcha

Edited by – Keerthana Lakshmi