WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.899 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are 00:00:02.899 --> 00:00:06.280 tackling a beast of a topic. I mean, truly a 00:00:06.280 --> 00:00:08.660 leviathan of the internet age. Oh, absolutely. 00:00:08.939 --> 00:00:12.199 We are talking about Reddit. It is. It's just 00:00:12.199 --> 00:00:14.099 impossible to discuss the history of the modern 00:00:14.099 --> 00:00:15.759 internet without discussing Reddit. It's like 00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:17.920 the plumbing of the web. It really is the plumbing. 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:20.440 And honestly, looking at the date today, it's 00:00:20.440 --> 00:00:24.120 February 2, 2026. It is just wild to look back 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:26.960 at where this thing started and, well, where 00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:29.370 it is now. Right. I mean, we are talking about 00:00:29.370 --> 00:00:32.390 one of those visited websites in the world. It's 00:00:32.390 --> 00:00:33.909 a publicly traded company now. It took a symbol 00:00:33.909 --> 00:00:37.189 RDDT on the New York Stock Exchange. Capitalized 00:00:37.189 --> 00:00:39.429 at billions and billions of dollars. It's part 00:00:39.429 --> 00:00:41.270 of the establishment. It's Wall Street. And yet, 00:00:41.369 --> 00:00:43.990 and this is the core of it all, it rests on a 00:00:43.990 --> 00:00:47.429 massive fundamental paradox. It is a corporate 00:00:47.429 --> 00:00:50.109 giant. Yes, it answers to shareholders. It has 00:00:50.109 --> 00:00:53.810 quarterly earnings calls. But its entire engine, 00:00:54.030 --> 00:00:56.490 the thing that keeps the lights on and the content 00:00:56.490 --> 00:01:00.380 flowing? It's a volunteer workforce. Yeah. It's 00:01:00.380 --> 00:01:03.299 a multibillion dollar platform that runs on unpaid 00:01:03.299 --> 00:01:05.480 labor. That's the whole magic trick. That is 00:01:05.480 --> 00:01:08.180 the part that always, always gets me. It's this 00:01:08.180 --> 00:01:11.420 massive contradiction. It has been the birthplace 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:14.079 of some of the most wholesome, amazing charity 00:01:14.079 --> 00:01:16.819 drives in Internet history. Billions of dollars 00:01:16.819 --> 00:01:20.099 raised for good causes over the years. And it's 00:01:20.099 --> 00:01:22.730 also been the source of some of the most. dangerous 00:01:22.730 --> 00:01:25.370 life ruining witch hunts we've ever seen online. 00:01:25.870 --> 00:01:28.430 It's a place where Bill Gates does Secret Santa 00:01:28.430 --> 00:01:31.310 and it's also a place that has been banned in 00:01:31.310 --> 00:01:34.049 entire countries for its content. It creates 00:01:34.049 --> 00:01:36.530 community and it destroys reputations. It is 00:01:36.530 --> 00:01:38.969 the front page of the Internet. But you're right. 00:01:39.030 --> 00:01:42.250 It's also this chaotic, messy bulletin board 00:01:42.250 --> 00:01:45.150 system that in many ways its soul hasn't really 00:01:45.150 --> 00:01:48.150 changed since 2005. So our mission today is to 00:01:48.150 --> 00:01:50.590 decode that. We are just doing a history lesson 00:01:50.590 --> 00:01:52.230 here. We really want to look at the mechanics 00:01:52.230 --> 00:01:54.450 of how this online community actually works. 00:01:54.510 --> 00:01:56.790 The nuts and bolts of it. Exactly. We need to 00:01:56.790 --> 00:01:59.810 understand the tension between that ideal of 00:01:59.810 --> 00:02:02.049 free speech and the reality of making money. 00:02:02.409 --> 00:02:04.810 And how a site started by two college roommates 00:02:04.810 --> 00:02:07.849 literally changed how the entire world consumes 00:02:07.849 --> 00:02:11.689 information. And we have quite the stack of sources 00:02:11.689 --> 00:02:15.189 to do it. We're looking at comprehensive histories, 00:02:15.389 --> 00:02:18.330 corporate reports from that whole IPO era in 00:02:18.330 --> 00:02:22.030 2024 and 2025. Right. Community archives, legal 00:02:22.030 --> 00:02:25.909 filings right up to the last few months. We're 00:02:25.909 --> 00:02:27.389 going to try and piece together the full story. 00:02:27.569 --> 00:02:29.849 I have to say, I'm really excited to talk about 00:02:29.849 --> 00:02:33.479 the Wild West days. the chaos of the early internet 00:02:33.479 --> 00:02:36.479 it feels so i don't know so distant now and i'm 00:02:36.479 --> 00:02:38.580 ready to get into the sociological shift because 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:41.740 what we're really seeing if we zoom out is this 00:02:41.740 --> 00:02:43.900 incredible transition from a community forum 00:02:43.900 --> 00:02:47.240 to what is essentially a mine for ai training 00:02:47.240 --> 00:02:49.659 data okay let's definitely put a pin in that 00:02:49.659 --> 00:02:51.620 because that ai stuff is terrifyingly recent 00:02:51.620 --> 00:02:53.520 it is but we have to start at the beginning the 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:55.979 origin story and i love this part because it's 00:02:55.979 --> 00:02:57.919 the classic silicon valley fake it till you make 00:02:57.919 --> 00:03:00.199 it tail it really truly is it starts in 2005 00:03:00.199 --> 00:03:02.590 university Virginia, you've got these two roommates, 00:03:02.789 --> 00:03:05.189 Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohaney. Just kids, really. 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:07.580 Yeah, and they didn't start out wanting to build 00:03:07.580 --> 00:03:09.560 a social news site at all. They had a totally 00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:11.539 different idea. They wanted to change the way 00:03:11.539 --> 00:03:14.400 we order food. Right. The famous My Mobile Menu. 00:03:14.599 --> 00:03:16.860 My Mobile Menu. The idea was you could order 00:03:16.860 --> 00:03:20.699 food using SMS text messaging. You'd text a sandwich 00:03:20.699 --> 00:03:23.139 shop your order right from your flip phone and 00:03:23.139 --> 00:03:25.780 then go pick it up. Which, to be fair, in 2026, 00:03:25.919 --> 00:03:27.479 we do that all the time with apps. Yeah. But 00:03:27.479 --> 00:03:30.659 in 2005. The timing was just, it was all wrong. 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:33.139 The infrastructure wasn't there. Most people 00:03:33.139 --> 00:03:35.810 didn't have smartphones. Texting costs, what, 00:03:35.830 --> 00:03:38.469 10 cents a message back then? The least. It was 00:03:38.469 --> 00:03:41.069 expensive. So they go and they pitch this idea 00:03:41.069 --> 00:03:44.430 to Paul Graham of Y Combinator, the famous startup 00:03:44.430 --> 00:03:46.750 incubator. They give the presentation of their 00:03:46.750 --> 00:03:50.129 lives. And Graham, well, he hated it. He just 00:03:50.129 --> 00:03:53.050 shot it down. Completely. He basically told them 00:03:53.050 --> 00:03:56.069 the idea was useless. Imagine that. You're 22 00:03:56.069 --> 00:03:58.650 years old. You pitch your dream. And the Oracle 00:03:58.650 --> 00:04:01.110 of Silicon Valley just says, nope, this is bad. 00:04:01.270 --> 00:04:03.969 That's devastating. But, and this is the key 00:04:03.969 --> 00:04:07.639 moment. He liked them. He saw their energy, their 00:04:07.639 --> 00:04:11.259 drive. So he invited them to apply to Y Combinator's 00:04:11.259 --> 00:04:14.020 first ever class, but with a condition. Find 00:04:14.020 --> 00:04:16.519 a new idea. Anything else. Come up with something 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:19.500 else. And during a brainstorming session, on 00:04:19.500 --> 00:04:22.040 a train ride, Graham is the one who suggests, 00:04:22.439 --> 00:04:25.360 build the front page of the internet. That phrase 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:28.250 is so ubiquitous now. But back then, there wasn't 00:04:28.250 --> 00:04:31.310 really a front page. You had Yahoo, maybe a portal. 00:04:31.449 --> 00:04:34.410 You had sites like Slashdot for tech news. And 00:04:34.410 --> 00:04:36.029 Digg was getting popular, but they were getting 00:04:36.029 --> 00:04:38.649 cluttered or were too niche. Graham wanted a 00:04:38.649 --> 00:04:40.769 place where the users themselves decided what 00:04:40.769 --> 00:04:43.009 was important. A democracy of links. Exactly. 00:04:43.310 --> 00:04:46.069 So Huffman codes the first version of the site 00:04:46.069 --> 00:04:48.370 in a language called Common Lisp. They launch 00:04:48.370 --> 00:04:51.949 in June 2005. But here is the problem every single 00:04:51.949 --> 00:04:55.029 social platform faces on day one. The ghost town 00:04:55.029 --> 00:04:57.310 problem. The ghost town. You launch a site designed 00:04:57.310 --> 00:05:00.529 for community discussion, but there is no community. 00:05:00.689 --> 00:05:02.670 It's empty. Yeah, if you're the first person 00:05:02.670 --> 00:05:05.189 at the party, you just leave. Exactly. If a user 00:05:05.189 --> 00:05:07.949 logs in and sees nothing or sees a post from 00:05:07.949 --> 00:05:10.050 three days ago, they leave and they never come 00:05:10.050 --> 00:05:12.449 back. You need that critical mass, like, instantly. 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:15.560 So what did they do? This is my favorite part 00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:18.220 because it feels so scrappy and honestly a little 00:05:18.220 --> 00:05:20.339 deceptive. It was very deceptive. They didn't 00:05:20.339 --> 00:05:22.939 buy ads. They didn't hire a marketing firm. Huffman 00:05:22.939 --> 00:05:25.899 and Ohanian just created hundreds of fake users. 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:29.050 Hundreds of them. They sat there day after day, 00:05:29.209 --> 00:05:32.029 logging in as user A, posting an interesting 00:05:32.029 --> 00:05:35.029 link, logging out, logging in as user B, and 00:05:35.029 --> 00:05:36.949 then leaving a comment on that link. They were 00:05:36.949 --> 00:05:39.970 talking to themselves for hours. They were holding 00:05:39.970 --> 00:05:42.470 entire conversations with their own fake accounts. 00:05:43.009 --> 00:05:45.629 But it served two really important purposes. 00:05:45.930 --> 00:05:48.310 One, it made the site look active, right? So 00:05:48.310 --> 00:05:50.189 real people wouldn't feel like they were shouting 00:05:50.189 --> 00:05:53.149 into the void. But two, and this is crucial, 00:05:53.329 --> 00:05:56.019 it set the tone of the site. By posting smart, 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:58.399 interesting articles about technology and science 00:05:58.399 --> 00:06:00.720 and programming, they were signaling to the first 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:03.199 real users, this is what Reddit is about. This 00:06:03.199 --> 00:06:05.800 is the kind of content we want here. It's a strategy 00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:07.600 that would probably be flagged as, I don't know, 00:06:07.639 --> 00:06:09.980 market manipulation or something today. But back 00:06:09.980 --> 00:06:12.560 then, it was just survival. Fake it till you 00:06:12.560 --> 00:06:14.949 make it. In the most literal sense of the phrase. 00:06:15.110 --> 00:06:17.470 And it absolutely worked. Real users started 00:06:17.470 --> 00:06:19.730 trickling in and eventually the founders could 00:06:19.730 --> 00:06:22.089 stop posting as fake people because real people 00:06:22.089 --> 00:06:24.870 were finally doing the work for them. OK, so 00:06:24.870 --> 00:06:26.850 they're getting some traction. But then came 00:06:26.850 --> 00:06:29.689 a really major shift in both the technology and 00:06:29.689 --> 00:06:33.490 the team itself. Yes. In late 2005, they merged 00:06:33.490 --> 00:06:35.790 with another company from their Y Combinator 00:06:35.790 --> 00:06:38.629 batch, a company called Infogami. And this is 00:06:38.629 --> 00:06:40.910 where Aaron Swartz enters the picture. Aaron 00:06:40.910 --> 00:06:44.259 Swartz. A true legend and a tragic figure in 00:06:44.259 --> 00:06:46.500 the history of the Internet. He was a prodigy. 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:48.860 I mean, he helped develop the RSS specification 00:06:48.860 --> 00:06:51.360 when he was, what, 14 years old? A teenager, 00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:53.860 yeah. When they merged, he technically became 00:06:53.860 --> 00:06:56.240 a co -founder of Reddit, right? Well, technically 00:06:56.240 --> 00:06:58.720 he was an equal owner of the new parent company, 00:06:58.860 --> 00:07:03.439 which they called Notabug. Great name. And his 00:07:03.439 --> 00:07:06.579 influence on Reddit was profound, particularly 00:07:06.579 --> 00:07:09.649 on the technical side. Because he took one look 00:07:09.649 --> 00:07:12.129 at the code, that common Lisp code Huffman had 00:07:12.129 --> 00:07:14.730 written, and he basically said, This isn't going 00:07:14.730 --> 00:07:17.009 to scale. This isn't going to work long term. 00:07:17.129 --> 00:07:19.509 Why not? I always heard Lisp was supposed to 00:07:19.509 --> 00:07:23.170 be this elegant, powerful, genius level language. 00:07:23.370 --> 00:07:26.550 It is elegant. But in 2005, it just didn't have 00:07:26.550 --> 00:07:28.829 the ecosystem. The libraries weren't there. They 00:07:28.829 --> 00:07:30.889 were spending all their time building basic tools 00:07:30.889 --> 00:07:34.029 just to make the site function. Swartz realized 00:07:34.029 --> 00:07:36.389 they were reinventing the wheel over and over 00:07:36.389 --> 00:07:38.829 again. So what was his solution? He pushed, and 00:07:38.829 --> 00:07:41.850 from what I read, he pushed hard to rewrite the 00:07:41.850 --> 00:07:44.240 entire site in Python. Okay, let's pause here 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:45.899 for a second. For the non -coders listening, 00:07:46.139 --> 00:07:48.699 explain why swapping one programming language 00:07:48.699 --> 00:07:51.319 for another is such a big deal. Why does it matter 00:07:51.319 --> 00:07:53.180 to the history of the company? It's a classic 00:07:53.180 --> 00:07:55.160 trade -off in software engineering. Think of 00:07:55.160 --> 00:07:58.060 it like baking bread. Using Lisp back then was 00:07:58.060 --> 00:08:00.060 like growing your own wheat, milling your own 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:02.680 flour, cultivating your own yeast, and then finally 00:08:02.680 --> 00:08:05.019 baking the bread. You have total control, but 00:08:05.019 --> 00:08:08.410 it takes forever. It takes forever. Using Python 00:08:08.410 --> 00:08:10.550 was like going to the store and just buying a 00:08:10.550 --> 00:08:13.290 bag of high -quality flour and a packet of yeast. 00:08:13.629 --> 00:08:16.529 You can get to the baking part much, much faster. 00:08:16.850 --> 00:08:19.209 So it's about speed. It's about developable speed. 00:08:19.629 --> 00:08:22.750 Now here's the nuance. Python as a language is 00:08:22.750 --> 00:08:25.350 actually slower for a computer to process than 00:08:25.350 --> 00:08:27.529 some other languages. It's less efficient for 00:08:27.529 --> 00:08:30.189 the machine. So why do it? Because it is incredibly 00:08:30.189 --> 00:08:33.610 fast for a human to write. And for a tiny startup 00:08:33.610 --> 00:08:36.090 with three people, developer speed is the only 00:08:36.090 --> 00:08:38.289 thing that matters. If you can push a new feature 00:08:38.289 --> 00:08:40.470 in an hour instead of a day, you can outpace 00:08:40.470 --> 00:08:43.029 your competitors like Digg was at the time. So 00:08:43.029 --> 00:08:45.250 they treated machine efficiency for human efficiency. 00:08:45.889 --> 00:08:48.789 100%. And that decision, which was really driven 00:08:48.789 --> 00:08:51.450 by Swartz, gave Reddit the agility it needed 00:08:51.450 --> 00:08:54.009 to survive and grow. It's why the site didn't 00:08:54.009 --> 00:08:56.049 just collapse under its own weight when traffic 00:08:56.049 --> 00:08:58.549 started to spike later on. But despite that growth, 00:08:58.710 --> 00:09:02.490 and despite the new, more stable code, They sold 00:09:02.490 --> 00:09:05.490 out pretty early. Shockingly early. In October 00:09:05.490 --> 00:09:08.570 of 2006, just over a year after launching, they 00:09:08.570 --> 00:09:11.450 sold Reddit to Condé Nast Publications. The people 00:09:11.450 --> 00:09:14.570 who own Wired, Vogue, The New Yorker. The pinnacle 00:09:14.570 --> 00:09:17.330 of old media. A totally different world. And 00:09:17.330 --> 00:09:19.970 for how much? What was the price tag? The reports 00:09:19.970 --> 00:09:22.649 vary, but the consensus is it was somewhere between 00:09:22.649 --> 00:09:26.360 $10 and $20 million. $10? To 20 million. I mean, 00:09:26.379 --> 00:09:29.639 considering the IPO valuation in 2024 was over 00:09:29.639 --> 00:09:33.740 $6 billion, that feels, well, it feels like they 00:09:33.740 --> 00:09:35.879 gave it away. In hindsight, it was a massive, 00:09:36.019 --> 00:09:39.120 massive undervaluation. They sold the goose that 00:09:39.120 --> 00:09:41.720 laid the golden eggs for, you know, the price 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:44.080 of a really nice chicken dinner. So why do it? 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:45.919 Were they just desperate? You have to remember 00:09:45.919 --> 00:09:49.639 the context of 2006. They were young, early 20s. 00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:52.679 The site was costing money to run. It was growing, 00:09:52.919 --> 00:09:56.200 but they had no real revenue model. $10 million 00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:59.299 is set for life money. It seemed like the smart, 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:01.740 safe bet at the time. But that corporate marriage, 00:10:01.940 --> 00:10:04.419 it wasn't exactly a happy one, was it? Yeah. 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:06.940 Especially not for Aaron Swartz. No, it was a 00:10:06.940 --> 00:10:09.279 culture clash of epic proportions. You have this 00:10:09.279 --> 00:10:11.759 hacktivist, this open information idealist in 00:10:11.759 --> 00:10:14.000 Swartz, and he's suddenly working for a legacy 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:17.220 magazine publisher in a stuffy office. He blogged 00:10:17.220 --> 00:10:19.860 about it pretty openly. He hated the office culture, 00:10:20.019 --> 00:10:22.840 the bureaucracy, the concept of FaceTime. He 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:24.940 essentially just stopped showing up to the office. 00:10:25.220 --> 00:10:28.179 And he was fired. He was fired in January 2007. 00:10:28.580 --> 00:10:31.080 It's such a sad foreshadowing of his later struggles 00:10:31.080 --> 00:10:33.340 with the legal system and his eventual suicide, 00:10:33.399 --> 00:10:35.320 which is a whole other deep dive we could do. 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:39.840 What a tragic story. But for Reddit, his departure 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:43.750 really marked the end of that indie era. Huffman 00:10:43.750 --> 00:10:47.289 and Ohanian eventually left, too, in 2009, leaving 00:10:47.289 --> 00:10:49.429 the site entirely in the hands of corporate managers 00:10:49.429 --> 00:10:51.710 for a while. And that leads us perfectly into 00:10:51.710 --> 00:10:53.830 the mechanics of the site. Because even though 00:10:53.830 --> 00:10:56.210 the founders left, the machine they built, what 00:10:56.210 --> 00:10:58.590 people call the hive mind, it just kept growing. 00:10:59.230 --> 00:11:01.090 And we really need to understand how that ecosystem 00:11:01.090 --> 00:11:03.549 actually works because it's so different from 00:11:03.549 --> 00:11:05.970 Facebook or X or anything else. Right. And its 00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:08.129 absolute core, Reddit, is simple. I submit something, 00:11:08.250 --> 00:11:10.990 a link, a picture, a text post. You, the listener, 00:11:11.149 --> 00:11:14.110 you look at it. If you like it, you upvote it. 00:11:14.169 --> 00:11:15.990 If you hate it or you think it's spam or whatever, 00:11:16.230 --> 00:11:19.169 you downvote it. It sounds incredibly simple, 00:11:19.289 --> 00:11:22.049 but it's a radical democratic model for distributing 00:11:22.049 --> 00:11:23.889 information. I've always thought of it like a 00:11:23.889 --> 00:11:25.950 democratic newspaper. That's a great analogy. 00:11:26.210 --> 00:11:28.870 The readers are the editors. Every single reader 00:11:28.870 --> 00:11:31.830 has a red pen. The algorithm takes all those 00:11:31.830 --> 00:11:34.769 votes. It factors in the age of the post so that 00:11:34.769 --> 00:11:37.809 fresh stuff tends to stay on top. And that determines 00:11:37.809 --> 00:11:40.940 its visibility. If enough people upvote it, it 00:11:40.940 --> 00:11:43.480 rises to the top of its community. If it gets 00:11:43.480 --> 00:11:46.960 really huge, it hits this true front page of 00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:48.659 the Internet. And we have talked about the art, 00:11:48.740 --> 00:11:50.820 the subreddits. This wasn't there at the very 00:11:50.820 --> 00:11:53.759 start, was it? No. And this was a crucial, critical 00:11:53.759 --> 00:11:56.659 innovation. It was introduced in 2008. Before 00:11:56.659 --> 00:11:59.500 that, everything was just one big bucket of links. 00:11:59.600 --> 00:12:02.600 Firebows of content. Total firehose. If you like 00:12:02.600 --> 00:12:04.799 programming but you hated politics, too bad. 00:12:04.879 --> 00:12:06.879 You saw it all. Subreddits allowed communities 00:12:06.879 --> 00:12:10.279 to form around specific... niche interests. This 00:12:10.279 --> 00:12:12.320 is the innovation that saved Reddit from becoming 00:12:12.320 --> 00:12:14.840 too noisy to be useful. It allowed for the infinite 00:12:14.840 --> 00:12:17.200 fracturing of interests. So you have these massive 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:20.340 ones like World News or Sure Funny with tens 00:12:20.340 --> 00:12:22.679 of millions of subscribers. But then you have, 00:12:22.740 --> 00:12:25.039 I mean, give us some of the weird ones. Oh, there 00:12:25.039 --> 00:12:27.519 are thousands upon thousands. There's our bread 00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:30.690 stapled to trees. Which is. Exactly what it sounds 00:12:30.690 --> 00:12:32.850 like. It is photos of people stapling slices 00:12:32.850 --> 00:12:35.669 of bread to trees. That's it. That is the entire 00:12:35.669 --> 00:12:38.149 community. Or you have the complete opposite, 00:12:38.330 --> 00:12:42.210 like Rask Historians, which has incredibly strict 00:12:42.210 --> 00:12:45.330 academic level standards for answers. Yeah. If 00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:47.429 you post a joke or a one line answer there, you 00:12:47.429 --> 00:12:50.070 get banned instantly. Instantly. It's serious 00:12:50.070 --> 00:12:52.309 business. And the look of it. For the longest 00:12:52.309 --> 00:12:55.799 time, Reddit looked like. Someone once described 00:12:55.799 --> 00:12:59.559 it as a dystopian Craigslist. That's pretty accurate. 00:12:59.679 --> 00:13:01.779 It was just blue links on a white background. 00:13:01.899 --> 00:13:04.820 It was text heavy. It was ugly. Deliberately 00:13:04.820 --> 00:13:07.059 ugly. I think so. It was a feature, not a bug. 00:13:07.220 --> 00:13:09.740 It prioritized information density over aesthetics. 00:13:10.019 --> 00:13:12.679 It was a signal to the users. We care about the 00:13:12.679 --> 00:13:15.080 data, not the gloss. It wasn't until the big 00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:18.100 2018 redesign and then the later rebrands in 00:13:18.100 --> 00:13:21.019 2023 for the IPO that they tried to make it look 00:13:21.019 --> 00:13:22.940 like a modern social media app. With a little 00:13:22.940 --> 00:13:26.370 alien mascot. The SNU. The SNU. Which, I love 00:13:26.370 --> 00:13:30.470 this story. Alexis Ohanian just doodled in a 00:13:30.470 --> 00:13:32.669 marketing class in college. It's such a great 00:13:32.669 --> 00:13:34.809 piece of lore. He originally wanted to name it 00:13:34.809 --> 00:13:38.509 SNU, as in what's new, but he settled on SNU. 00:13:38.879 --> 00:13:40.720 And it really represents the adaptability of 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:42.740 the community, right? It's a blank canvas. Totally. 00:13:42.899 --> 00:13:45.720 You see Snoo dressed as a Spartan warrior on 00:13:45.720 --> 00:13:48.200 a history sub or as a scientist on a science 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:51.039 sub or holding a lightsaber on a Star Wars sub. 00:13:51.139 --> 00:13:53.200 It's infinitely customizable. But here's the 00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:55.080 thing that makes it all work and also makes it 00:13:55.080 --> 00:13:59.240 so fragile. The gamification. Why do people post? 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:02.539 Why do they spend hours writing these detailed 00:14:02.539 --> 00:14:06.220 guides or comments? One word. Karma. Fake internet 00:14:06.220 --> 00:14:08.379 points. That's all they are. They mean nothing, 00:14:08.539 --> 00:14:10.419 strictly speaking. You can't spend them. You 00:14:10.419 --> 00:14:12.419 can't trade them for cash. But they mean everything 00:14:12.419 --> 00:14:14.539 for status within the community. They mean everything. 00:14:14.899 --> 00:14:16.820 High karma means you're a valuable contributor. 00:14:17.179 --> 00:14:19.519 It creates this little feedback loop of dopamine 00:14:19.519 --> 00:14:21.799 in your brain. You post something clever. The 00:14:21.799 --> 00:14:24.559 number goes up. You feel validated by the hive 00:14:24.559 --> 00:14:26.340 mind. And then you have things like cake day. 00:14:26.669 --> 00:14:28.730 The anniversary of your account creation. It's 00:14:28.730 --> 00:14:30.809 another little hook that anchors you to the platform 00:14:30.809 --> 00:14:32.909 and your identity there. But the real engine 00:14:32.909 --> 00:14:35.789 here isn't just the users posting. It's the users 00:14:35.789 --> 00:14:39.169 cleaning up. The moderators. We have to stop 00:14:39.169 --> 00:14:41.210 here because this is the most unique thing about 00:14:41.210 --> 00:14:43.629 Reddit compared to TikTok or Instagram or any 00:14:43.629 --> 00:14:46.269 other platform. This is the absolute critical 00:14:46.269 --> 00:14:50.169 piece of the entire puzzle. Moderators are volunteers. 00:14:50.210 --> 00:14:53.090 They are not employees of Reddit. Not at all. 00:14:53.129 --> 00:14:56.769 They are just users who step up. to manage the 00:14:56.769 --> 00:14:59.330 communities they care about. They enforce the 00:14:59.330 --> 00:15:01.950 rules, they delete the spam, they ban the trolls, 00:15:02.230 --> 00:15:04.330 they organize events. And they do it for free? 00:15:04.409 --> 00:15:06.789 For zero dollars. There was an estimate, it's 00:15:06.789 --> 00:15:08.250 a bit older now, but it gives you a sense of 00:15:08.250 --> 00:15:11.570 the scale, that moderators perform about $3 .4 00:15:11.570 --> 00:15:15.230 million worth of unpaid work annually. That is 00:15:15.230 --> 00:15:18.350 just an insane number. And that's a very conservative 00:15:18.350 --> 00:15:21.210 estimate. That number is likely much, much higher 00:15:21.210 --> 00:15:24.610 now. At the time, it equated to nearly 3 % of 00:15:24.610 --> 00:15:26.769 Reddit's revenue. They're doing the content moderation 00:15:26.769 --> 00:15:29.350 work that Facebook or Twitter has to pay armies 00:15:29.350 --> 00:15:31.590 of contractors in other countries to do. They 00:15:31.590 --> 00:15:33.750 are the janitors, the police, and the judges 00:15:33.750 --> 00:15:35.649 of the internet, and they are working for free. 00:15:35.789 --> 00:15:40.070 And that dynamic, that complete reliance on free 00:15:40.070 --> 00:15:45.149 labor, that creates... a very strange, very tense 00:15:45.149 --> 00:15:47.389 power balance, doesn't it? It creates a massive 00:15:47.389 --> 00:15:50.250 liability for the company. Reddit Inc. provides 00:15:50.250 --> 00:15:53.370 the servers, the electricity, the code, but the 00:15:53.370 --> 00:15:55.690 volunteers provide the order. They provide the 00:15:55.690 --> 00:15:58.129 safe for advertisers environment. Right. If the 00:15:58.129 --> 00:16:00.190 volunteers all decide to stop working one day, 00:16:00.230 --> 00:16:02.730 the site fills with spam, scams and pornography 00:16:02.730 --> 00:16:05.669 almost instantly. It becomes completely unusable. 00:16:05.730 --> 00:16:08.250 In a very real way, Reddit Inc. serves at the 00:16:08.250 --> 00:16:10.169 pleasure of its volunteers. And we're going to 00:16:10.169 --> 00:16:12.169 see exactly what happens when those volunteers 00:16:12.169 --> 00:16:14.470 go on strike later in our deep dive. Oh, yeah. 00:16:14.730 --> 00:16:17.509 But before we get to the wars, we have to celebrate 00:16:17.509 --> 00:16:20.309 the peace, or at least the chaos that was fun, 00:16:20.490 --> 00:16:23.710 the best of times. Because for a long while, 00:16:24.009 --> 00:16:27.309 Reddit felt like a user -run superpower. Reddit 00:16:27.309 --> 00:16:29.809 culture is so unique because of that hive mind. 00:16:30.029 --> 00:16:32.070 When it decides to focus on something, it is 00:16:32.070 --> 00:16:34.129 an absolutely unstoppable force. Let's start 00:16:34.129 --> 00:16:37.519 with the Reddit hug of death. Right. This is 00:16:37.519 --> 00:16:40.460 a rite of passage for any small website or creator. 00:16:40.820 --> 00:16:44.759 Someone posts a link to a cool blog or a small 00:16:44.759 --> 00:16:47.759 business or an artist's portfolio on Reddit. 00:16:47.919 --> 00:16:49.980 And it hits the front page. It hits the front 00:16:49.980 --> 00:16:54.080 page. And suddenly 50 ,000, 100 ,000 people try 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:56.360 to click that link at the exact same time. And 00:16:56.360 --> 00:16:59.850 the little website server just... The sight crashes 00:16:59.850 --> 00:17:02.110 immediately. It's called the hug of death because 00:17:02.110 --> 00:17:04.650 it's usually done out of love, but it completely 00:17:04.650 --> 00:17:07.940 destroys the target. It was the first sign of 00:17:07.940 --> 00:17:10.400 the sheer volume of traffic Reddit could command. 00:17:10.599 --> 00:17:12.960 But it's not just crashing websites. It's real 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:15.759 world activism. Do you remember the Restoring 00:17:15.759 --> 00:17:18.819 Truthiness campaign back in 2010? Oh, vividly. 00:17:18.819 --> 00:17:20.740 This was the peak of The Daily Show with Jon 00:17:20.740 --> 00:17:23.259 Stewart and the Colbert Report era. Right. Glenn 00:17:23.259 --> 00:17:25.460 Beck was holding a big rally in Washington, D 00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:27.880 .C. And Redditors decided they wanted a counter 00:17:27.880 --> 00:17:30.299 rally, a satirical one led by Stephen Colbert. 00:17:30.579 --> 00:17:32.200 But they didn't just start a petition or something. 00:17:32.380 --> 00:17:34.880 No, this is Reddit. They put their money where 00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:37.579 their mouth was. They raised over $100 ,000 for 00:17:37.579 --> 00:17:39.960 charity in a matter of hours just to get Stephen 00:17:39.960 --> 00:17:42.839 Colbert's attention. They filled the entire front 00:17:42.839 --> 00:17:45.619 page with threads organizing it. And it happened. 00:17:45.859 --> 00:17:48.900 He actually did it. The rally to restore sanity 00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:52.279 and door fear. Thousands of people showed up 00:17:52.279 --> 00:17:54.740 on the National Mall in D .C. holding signs that 00:17:54.740 --> 00:17:57.740 were all inside jokes from Reddit. It was this 00:17:57.740 --> 00:18:00.279 incredible moment where Internet memes literally 00:18:00.279 --> 00:18:03.079 manifested in the physical world. And the altruism 00:18:03.079 --> 00:18:06.319 went way beyond that. The Raytheism community 00:18:06.319 --> 00:18:10.059 raised over $200 ,000 for Doctors Without Borders. 00:18:10.279 --> 00:18:12.660 The Haiti Relief Fund after the earthquake raised 00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:15.839 over $180 ,000. And then there was Reddit Gifts. 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:18.400 The Secret Santa Exchange. It broke Guinness 00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:20.720 World Records for the largest gift exchange on 00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:23.059 the planet. And you had regular people exchanging 00:18:23.059 --> 00:18:25.279 gifts with celebrities like Snoop Dogg or Bill 00:18:25.279 --> 00:18:27.940 Gates. Can you imagine opening a package and 00:18:27.940 --> 00:18:30.490 realizing... Bill Gates sent you a giant stuffed 00:18:30.490 --> 00:18:33.150 animal and made a huge donation to your favorite 00:18:33.150 --> 00:18:35.369 charity in your name. It created this feeling 00:18:35.369 --> 00:18:37.309 that the internet wasn't just strangers screaming 00:18:37.309 --> 00:18:39.130 at each other. It could be a real neighborhood. 00:18:39.509 --> 00:18:42.509 And then there is workplace. I think this might 00:18:42.509 --> 00:18:44.309 be my favorite thing Reddit has ever done. It 00:18:44.309 --> 00:18:46.190 is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating 00:18:46.190 --> 00:18:48.410 social experiments ever conducted online. For 00:18:48.410 --> 00:18:49.829 those who might have missed it, you have to paint 00:18:49.829 --> 00:18:51.549 the picture for us. What was their pure place? 00:18:51.769 --> 00:18:54.309 Okay, so it happened first in 2017, and then 00:18:54.309 --> 00:18:58.009 they brought it back in 2022 and 2023. Reddit 00:18:58.009 --> 00:19:03.279 created a giant blank white digital canvas. Millions 00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:06.400 and millions of pixels. Yeah. And each user could 00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:09.440 place exactly one colored pixel on that canvas 00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:12.519 every five minutes. Just one pixel. So if I want 00:19:12.519 --> 00:19:14.799 to draw a picture by myself, I can't. I put down 00:19:14.799 --> 00:19:17.200 a red dot, and five minutes later, someone else 00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:19.420 can just cover it with a blue dot. Exactly. Alone, 00:19:19.619 --> 00:19:22.940 you are completely powerless. Right. But communities 00:19:22.940 --> 00:19:25.740 coordinated. The German subreddit coordinated 00:19:25.740 --> 00:19:28.299 to build a massive German flag across the canvas. 00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:30.920 Fans of Star Wars worked together to build a 00:19:30.920 --> 00:19:33.069 movie poster. And you also had the forces of 00:19:33.069 --> 00:19:36.210 chaos. You're the void. The void. A coalition 00:19:36.210 --> 00:19:38.650 of users dedicated to just making everything 00:19:38.650 --> 00:19:41.869 black. Pure destruction for the sake of destruction. 00:19:42.049 --> 00:19:43.869 So you're watching art and war happen at the 00:19:43.869 --> 00:19:47.049 same time. You watched alliances form and break 00:19:47.049 --> 00:19:50.099 in real time. The subreddit for the trans community 00:19:50.099 --> 00:19:52.900 allied with the subreddit for the UK flag to 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:54.880 protect each other's borders from being erased. 00:19:55.160 --> 00:19:58.200 It was a perfect visual representation of human 00:19:58.200 --> 00:20:01.819 cooperation, tribalism, and conflict all played 00:20:01.819 --> 00:20:04.559 out in pixels. And we can't talk about classic 00:20:04.559 --> 00:20:06.440 Reddit culture without talking about Mistress 00:20:06.440 --> 00:20:09.779 Flashypants. Alas. Oh, the Greenpeace whale. 00:20:09.980 --> 00:20:12.480 This is the perfect example of rule number one 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:14.500 of the internet. Don't mess with the internet. 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:17.319 So Greenpeace decides to hold an online poll. 00:20:17.710 --> 00:20:19.930 to name a humpback whale they're tracking. Right. 00:20:20.069 --> 00:20:22.390 They probably wanted a nice, majestic name, Titan 00:20:22.390 --> 00:20:25.250 or Aurora or something. And Reddit finds the 00:20:25.250 --> 00:20:27.710 poll, and they see one of the options is Mr. 00:20:27.890 --> 00:20:29.789 Splashy Pants. Which was probably just put there 00:20:29.789 --> 00:20:32.170 as a joke by a web intern or something. A fatal 00:20:32.170 --> 00:20:34.710 mistake. A fatal mistake. Reddit voted en masse. 00:20:34.849 --> 00:20:36.670 They just completely crushed the other options. 00:20:36.690 --> 00:20:39.410 It wasn't even close. And to Greenpeace's everlasting 00:20:39.410 --> 00:20:42.390 credit, they didn't disqualify it or get mad. 00:20:42.890 --> 00:20:45.410 They embraced it. They were smart. They realized 00:20:45.410 --> 00:20:47.470 that the joke brought a massive amount of attention 00:20:47.470 --> 00:20:50.509 to their cause. They started selling Mr. Splashy 00:20:50.509 --> 00:20:53.470 Pants t -shirts. It showed the symbiotic potential 00:20:53.470 --> 00:20:56.509 of Reddit. If you play along with the hive minds 00:20:56.509 --> 00:20:59.730 joke, you win. If you try to fight it, you almost 00:20:59.730 --> 00:21:02.829 always lose. Which brings us to the AMAs, the 00:21:02.829 --> 00:21:06.680 Ask Me Anything format. This really felt like 00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:09.019 it changed journalism in a way. It completely 00:21:09.019 --> 00:21:11.980 democratized the interview. Before Reddit, if 00:21:11.980 --> 00:21:13.619 you wanted to hear from a celebrity, you watched 00:21:13.619 --> 00:21:16.160 a polished, prearranged interview on a talk show. 00:21:16.339 --> 00:21:19.160 But on Reddit, you had Barack Obama while he 00:21:19.160 --> 00:21:20.759 was the sitting president of the United States 00:21:20.759 --> 00:21:23.599 doing an AMA. The title of the post was just, 00:21:23.640 --> 00:21:26.160 I am Barack Obama, president of the United States, 00:21:26.200 --> 00:21:29.119 ask me anything. And the site crashed. A presidential 00:21:29.119 --> 00:21:31.619 hug of death. Exactly. And he answered questions 00:21:31.619 --> 00:21:33.980 about his beer recipe in the White House, but 00:21:33.980 --> 00:21:37.859 also serious policy questions. But the real magic 00:21:37.859 --> 00:21:40.440 of the AMAs wasn't just the famous people. It 00:21:40.440 --> 00:21:43.119 was the ordinary people. You'd see a post like, 00:21:43.220 --> 00:21:45.960 I'm a vacuum repair technician who has worked 00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:49.440 for the same shop for 30 years. AMA. And that 00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:52.539 thread is legendary. It has thousands of comments. 00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:55.980 Who knew vacuum repair was so fascinating? It 00:21:55.980 --> 00:21:59.559 valued authenticity and specific deep knowledge 00:21:59.559 --> 00:22:04.619 over just celebrity status. But, and there's 00:22:04.619 --> 00:22:08.759 always a but with Reddit, this culture of absolute 00:22:08.759 --> 00:22:12.380 free speech, this anonymity, this mob rule voting 00:22:12.380 --> 00:22:16.180 system. It has a very dark side, a really, really 00:22:16.180 --> 00:22:18.099 dark side. It does. And this is where the story 00:22:18.099 --> 00:22:19.980 gets heavy. We have to talk about the echo chamber 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:22.039 effect. Right. The upvote system is democratic, 00:22:22.259 --> 00:22:25.259 yes, but it also suppresses dissent. If you go 00:22:25.259 --> 00:22:27.380 into a community that loves, say, a particular 00:22:27.380 --> 00:22:29.200 movie and you post a comment saying you think 00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:31.299 that movie is terrible. You get downvoted to 00:22:31.299 --> 00:22:33.000 oblivion. Your comment gets hidden at the bottom 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:35.140 of the page. So the only opinions that are visible 00:22:35.140 --> 00:22:37.079 are the ones that everyone already agrees with. 00:22:37.180 --> 00:22:39.339 And it just reinforces everyone's existing bias. 00:22:39.619 --> 00:22:41.779 Exactly. It reinforces bias. It can radicalize 00:22:41.779 --> 00:22:44.440 communities. And sometimes. that radicalization 00:22:44.440 --> 00:22:47.160 spills out into the real world with absolutely 00:22:47.160 --> 00:22:49.380 devastating consequences. And there is no better 00:22:49.380 --> 00:22:51.460 example of this than the Boston bombing in 2013. 00:22:51.920 --> 00:22:54.640 This is arguably the lowest moment in Reddit's 00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:57.640 entire history. Let's walk through what happened. 00:22:57.819 --> 00:23:00.599 The bombing occurs at the marathon. The police 00:23:00.599 --> 00:23:03.240 are scrambling, looking for suspects. And Reddit 00:23:03.240 --> 00:23:07.079 decides to help. A subreddit called RFindBostonBombers 00:23:07.079 --> 00:23:10.319 springs up. They wanted to crowdsource the investigation. 00:23:10.910 --> 00:23:12.970 They treated it like a game, like a puzzle to 00:23:12.970 --> 00:23:15.509 be solved. They were scanning thousands of photos 00:23:15.509 --> 00:23:18.109 of the crowd, circling people with backpacks, 00:23:18.109 --> 00:23:20.130 listening to police scanners they found online. 00:23:20.430 --> 00:23:22.950 Okay, but hang on. How does that actually go 00:23:22.950 --> 00:23:25.789 so wrong? I get people speculating, but how do 00:23:25.789 --> 00:23:28.529 you go from just looking at photos to accusing 00:23:28.529 --> 00:23:31.450 a specific innocent kid? It's the bystander effect 00:23:31.450 --> 00:23:34.250 in reverse. Everyone assumes someone else has 00:23:34.250 --> 00:23:36.849 verified the information. Someone in one thread 00:23:36.849 --> 00:23:39.529 circles a backpack in a grainy photo. Someone 00:23:39.529 --> 00:23:41.369 in a different thread is listening to police 00:23:41.369 --> 00:23:43.630 scanner audio, and they think they hear the name 00:23:43.630 --> 00:23:46.750 Sunil. Sunil Tripathi. Sunil Tripathi. He was 00:23:46.750 --> 00:23:48.869 a student at Brown University who had been reported 00:23:48.869 --> 00:23:51.309 missing by his family about a month prior to 00:23:51.309 --> 00:23:53.190 the bombing. So the hive mind connects these 00:23:53.190 --> 00:23:56.109 two totally unrelated data points. Missing student 00:23:56.109 --> 00:23:58.740 equals bomber. And because thousands of people 00:23:58.740 --> 00:24:00.920 are upvoting these posts, it makes it look like 00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:03.200 the truth. It hits the front page of Reddit. 00:24:03.460 --> 00:24:06.240 And then journalists, seeing it trending on Reddit, 00:24:06.400 --> 00:24:08.700 started tweeting about it as if it were a credible 00:24:08.700 --> 00:24:11.569 lead. And his family? The Tripathi family was 00:24:11.569 --> 00:24:13.890 already going through hell. Their son was missing. 00:24:14.069 --> 00:24:16.430 And suddenly their phones are blowing up with 00:24:16.430 --> 00:24:18.670 death threats. They're being told on social media 00:24:18.670 --> 00:24:20.769 that their son is a mass murdering terrorist. 00:24:21.170 --> 00:24:23.970 And the awful, awful tragedy of it all was that 00:24:23.970 --> 00:24:26.609 Sunil had already passed away by suicide before 00:24:26.609 --> 00:24:28.950 the bombing even happened. His body was found 00:24:28.950 --> 00:24:31.839 later in a river. Reddit had accused a deceased, 00:24:32.039 --> 00:24:34.819 innocent young man of terrorism. The general 00:24:34.819 --> 00:24:37.140 manager at the time, Eric Martin, had to issue 00:24:37.140 --> 00:24:40.119 this massive public apology. He called it what 00:24:40.119 --> 00:24:43.160 it was, online witch hunts and dangerous speculation. 00:24:43.720 --> 00:24:45.940 It was the ultimate proof that a million amateurs 00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:48.779 with keyboards don't equal one professional detective. 00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:51.579 It proved that the hive mind lacks due process. 00:24:51.640 --> 00:24:55.240 It lacks verification. It is pure, unfiltered 00:24:55.240 --> 00:24:58.480 impulse. And that tension. Between letting people 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:00.660 say whatever they want and keeping people safe 00:25:00.660 --> 00:25:03.339 from harassment, that became the central struggle 00:25:03.339 --> 00:25:05.680 for the company for the next few years. We saw 00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:08.779 it again with the fappening in 2014. The stolen 00:25:08.779 --> 00:25:11.180 celebrity photos. Spreading like wildfire on 00:25:11.180 --> 00:25:14.440 the site. And Reddit was really slow to ban the 00:25:14.440 --> 00:25:16.819 subreddits hosting them, arguing for free speech. 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:19.279 And they got hammered for it in the press. And 00:25:19.279 --> 00:25:21.559 then there was the raw hate speech. Communities 00:25:21.559 --> 00:25:24.720 like FurFatPeopleHate, which existed solely to 00:25:24.720 --> 00:25:28.009 harass overweight people. or, later, Arthur Donald. 00:25:28.230 --> 00:25:31.369 Right. In 2015, they made a huge move and banned 00:25:31.369 --> 00:25:34.009 FurFatPeopleHate and several other harassing 00:25:34.009 --> 00:25:36.609 subreddits. This was a massive turning point. 00:25:36.730 --> 00:25:39.529 Why? It signaled that Reddit was no longer a 00:25:39.529 --> 00:25:41.809 free speech absolutist platform. They were finally 00:25:41.809 --> 00:25:43.950 drawing a line saying harassment is not okay 00:25:43.950 --> 00:25:46.690 here. But the users fought back, right? They 00:25:46.690 --> 00:25:48.789 claimed it was censorship. Oh, they did. And 00:25:48.789 --> 00:25:50.930 the leadership turmoil at the top made everything 00:25:50.930 --> 00:25:54.329 10 times worse. You had the CEO, Yushan Wang, 00:25:54.609 --> 00:25:57.130 resign, partly over a dispute about where the 00:25:57.130 --> 00:25:59.289 office should be located. No, he wanted to move 00:25:59.289 --> 00:26:02.250 the office to Daly City, of all places. He did. 00:26:02.490 --> 00:26:04.650 He thought San Francisco was too expensive for 00:26:04.650 --> 00:26:06.809 employees. The board disagreed. He quit over 00:26:06.809 --> 00:26:10.269 it. And then Ellen Pau took over as interim CEO. 00:26:10.769 --> 00:26:13.990 And she faced... Well, I don't think it's an 00:26:13.990 --> 00:26:16.289 exaggeration to say she faced a torrent of racist 00:26:16.289 --> 00:26:18.990 and sexist abuse. It was a classic example of 00:26:18.990 --> 00:26:21.289 the glass cliff phenomenon. She was brought in 00:26:21.289 --> 00:26:23.289 to clean up the toxicity and she immediately 00:26:23.289 --> 00:26:26.289 became the target of all of it. And then Emageddon 00:26:26.289 --> 00:26:29.009 happened on her watch in 2015. That was when 00:26:29.009 --> 00:26:31.970 Victoria Taylor was fired. Victoria was a beloved 00:26:31.970 --> 00:26:35.230 employee who managed all the celebrity AMAs. 00:26:35.410 --> 00:26:38.289 The moderators loved her. When she was let go 00:26:38.289 --> 00:26:40.829 with no warning, the moderators felt completely 00:26:40.829 --> 00:26:43.809 cut off from the company. And they protested. 00:26:43.809 --> 00:26:46.230 They took thousands of subreddits, private and 00:26:46.230 --> 00:26:49.069 protest. The site was basically unusable. Powell 00:26:49.069 --> 00:26:51.170 took all the heat for that and for the new anti 00:26:51.170 --> 00:26:53.630 -harassment policies. She eventually resigned, 00:26:53.789 --> 00:26:55.430 but she really did the dirty work that had to 00:26:55.430 --> 00:26:57.329 be done to start cleaning up the site. And then 00:26:57.329 --> 00:27:00.769 the old king returned, Steve Huffman, the co 00:27:00.769 --> 00:27:03.480 -founder. Yeah. His username, Uspez. But his 00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:05.900 return wasn't without its own major controversy. 00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:09.319 In 2016, during the height of the Trump election 00:27:09.319 --> 00:27:12.279 cycle, Arthur Donald was incredibly active and 00:27:12.279 --> 00:27:14.319 often, you know, very toxic. And users, they 00:27:14.319 --> 00:27:16.480 were insulting Huffman personally in the comments? 00:27:16.619 --> 00:27:19.420 Constantly. And he snapped. What did he do? He 00:27:19.420 --> 00:27:22.400 went into the database using his CEO admin privileges 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:26.119 and he edited the comments of users. He changed 00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:28.700 insults that were directed at him at USPES to 00:27:28.700 --> 00:27:30.700 be directed at the moderators of Arthur Donald 00:27:30.700 --> 00:27:33.619 instead. That is... That's unbelievable. The 00:27:33.619 --> 00:27:36.619 CEO of a major tech platform secretly editing 00:27:36.619 --> 00:27:39.279 user comments. It destroyed a huge amount of 00:27:39.279 --> 00:27:41.660 trust in the community. He admitted it. He apologized. 00:27:41.779 --> 00:27:43.500 He called it a prank that went wrong. But it 00:27:43.500 --> 00:27:46.279 showed that the platform was not some neutral 00:27:46.279 --> 00:27:49.559 utility. It was run by people with emotions and, 00:27:49.660 --> 00:27:51.519 more importantly, with the keys to the database. 00:27:51.839 --> 00:27:54.940 So we have this decade of just turbulence. But 00:27:54.940 --> 00:27:57.259 then we enter the modern era. The corporate era. 00:27:57.660 --> 00:27:59.759 Because Reddit wanted to go public. They wanted 00:27:59.759 --> 00:28:02.339 that big IPO. Yeah. And to do that, they needed 00:28:02.339 --> 00:28:04.660 to clean up the house. And crucially, they needed 00:28:04.660 --> 00:28:07.559 to monetize. And that brings us directly to the 00:28:07.559 --> 00:28:11.400 API controversy of 2023. This is the moment the 00:28:11.400 --> 00:28:13.680 community really felt like it became a commodity. 00:28:14.380 --> 00:28:16.099 We should probably pause here and define what 00:28:16.099 --> 00:28:18.339 an API is because it sounds really boring and 00:28:18.339 --> 00:28:20.559 technical, but it's actually the keys to the 00:28:20.559 --> 00:28:23.579 castle. It really is. Think of Reddit as a massive 00:28:23.579 --> 00:28:26.359 public library. For years and years, Reddit gave 00:28:26.359 --> 00:28:28.779 out free keys to the back door of the library. 00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:31.660 Developers could use those keys to build their 00:28:31.660 --> 00:28:34.619 own apps like Apollo or Reddit is Fun that would 00:28:34.619 --> 00:28:36.980 go in, grab the books, which are the posts and 00:28:36.980 --> 00:28:39.980 comments, and display them in a much nicer, cleaner 00:28:39.980 --> 00:28:43.250 reading room than Reddit's own building. So Apollo 00:28:43.250 --> 00:28:45.990 was like a luxury reading room for Reddit's content. 00:28:46.150 --> 00:28:48.509 It was a better user experience. And Reddit was 00:28:48.509 --> 00:28:51.349 okay with this. For a long time, yes. Because 00:28:51.349 --> 00:28:53.950 Reddit's own official mobile app was famously 00:28:53.950 --> 00:28:57.369 terrible for years. These third -party apps actually 00:28:57.369 --> 00:28:59.769 helped grow the site and keep users engaged. 00:29:00.190 --> 00:29:02.250 But then Reddit looked at their server bills 00:29:02.250 --> 00:29:04.250 and they looked at their IPO plans and they said, 00:29:04.329 --> 00:29:07.579 wait a second. Apollo is making money from user 00:29:07.579 --> 00:29:10.079 subscriptions, but we are paying for the electricity 00:29:10.079 --> 00:29:13.099 and the storage to host all the data they're 00:29:13.099 --> 00:29:16.420 using. So in April's 2023, Reddit says the party's 00:29:16.420 --> 00:29:19.599 over. We are going to start charging for the 00:29:19.599 --> 00:29:21.660 API. And they didn't just put up a small toll 00:29:21.660 --> 00:29:24.359 booth. They built a fortress. They priced access 00:29:24.359 --> 00:29:27.180 to the data so astronomically high that it was 00:29:27.180 --> 00:29:29.240 impossible for these independent developers to 00:29:29.240 --> 00:29:31.599 pay. How high are we talking? The developer of 00:29:31.599 --> 00:29:34.420 Apollo, a guy named Christian Selig. He did the 00:29:34.420 --> 00:29:37.059 math and said it would cost him $20 million a 00:29:37.059 --> 00:29:39.279 year to keep his app running. So it wasn't a 00:29:39.279 --> 00:29:41.460 fee. It was a kill order. It was absolutely a 00:29:41.460 --> 00:29:43.440 kill order. They wanted these apps gone. And 00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:45.559 the users revolted. This is the biggest protest 00:29:45.559 --> 00:29:48.180 in Reddit history, right? By far. In June of 00:29:48.180 --> 00:29:52.059 2023, over 8 ,000 subreddits went dark. The moderators 00:29:52.059 --> 00:29:54.319 took them private. The front page of the internet 00:29:54.319 --> 00:29:57.500 was suddenly empty. And the protests were so 00:29:57.500 --> 00:30:00.579 creative and petty in that classic Reddit way. 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:03.400 I loved the Repix protests. Oh, it was brilliant. 00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:06.259 When Reddit forced the moderators to reopen the 00:30:06.259 --> 00:30:08.900 subreddit, the community voted on a new rule. 00:30:09.450 --> 00:30:11.569 They would only allow pictures of the comedian 00:30:11.569 --> 00:30:14.170 John Oliver. Just page after page of John Oliver. 00:30:14.289 --> 00:30:16.289 John Oliver looking sexy. John Oliver looking 00:30:16.289 --> 00:30:19.349 confused. John Oliver holding a cabbage. Or you 00:30:19.349 --> 00:30:22.630 had communities marking themselves as NSFW, not 00:30:22.630 --> 00:30:25.130 safe for work. Why did they do that? What was 00:30:25.130 --> 00:30:28.269 the strategy there? Because Reddit cannot run 00:30:28.269 --> 00:30:31.490 advertisements on NSFW content. It was a direct 00:30:31.490 --> 00:30:34.109 tactical strike on their revenue right before 00:30:34.109 --> 00:30:36.430 the IPO. But unlike all the previous protests, 00:30:36.769 --> 00:30:39.779 this time Reddit held firm. The company didn't 00:30:39.779 --> 00:30:41.839 back down. They did not. Steve Huffman didn't 00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:43.960 blink. He did interviews where he basically said, 00:30:44.059 --> 00:30:46.319 this is just noise, this will pass. He threatened 00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:48.539 to remove moderators who kept their communities 00:30:48.539 --> 00:30:50.839 closed. He just waited them out. And the apps 00:30:50.839 --> 00:30:53.359 died. The third -party apps died. Apollo shut 00:30:53.359 --> 00:30:56.640 down. Reddit is fun shut down. The protest failed. 00:30:56.900 --> 00:30:59.690 It really felt like a defeat for the users. It 00:30:59.690 --> 00:31:02.569 was. It was the moment that Reddit, the company, 00:31:02.750 --> 00:31:04.869 proved that it owns the platform, not the community. 00:31:05.230 --> 00:31:08.349 And that victory for them paved the way for March 00:31:08.349 --> 00:31:11.430 2024, the IPO. They listed on the New York Stock 00:31:11.430 --> 00:31:14.289 Exchange as RDDT. They opened at a valuation 00:31:14.289 --> 00:31:18.809 of $6 .4 billion. By the middle of 2024, it was 00:31:18.809 --> 00:31:21.670 up to nearly $10 billion. So from a business 00:31:21.670 --> 00:31:23.930 perspective, the strategy worked. The business 00:31:23.930 --> 00:31:27.230 won. But the soul of the place, that feels different 00:31:27.230 --> 00:31:29.599 now. It is different. Because now the most important 00:31:29.599 --> 00:31:32.000 customer isn't the user looking for cat pictures. 00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:34.299 The most important customer is the AI company 00:31:34.299 --> 00:31:36.720 that is desperate for data. This is, yeah, this 00:31:36.720 --> 00:31:38.680 is the, here's where it gets really interesting 00:31:38.680 --> 00:31:42.240 part of the story. The AI goldmine. Why is Reddit 00:31:42.240 --> 00:31:45.460 data so uniquely valuable for training AI? Think 00:31:45.460 --> 00:31:47.440 about what Reddit is. It's the largest, most 00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:49.740 diverse archive of human conversation on the 00:31:49.740 --> 00:31:52.180 planet. You have two decades of arguments, jokes, 00:31:52.400 --> 00:31:55.480 heartfelt advice, coding help, relationship drama, 00:31:55.740 --> 00:31:58.400 fan theories. It's how humans actually talk to 00:31:58.400 --> 00:32:01.319 each other. Exactly. Books are too formal. Twitter 00:32:01.319 --> 00:32:04.460 is too short and chaotic. Reddit is the perfect 00:32:04.460 --> 00:32:07.240 data set to train a large language model like 00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:10.779 ChatGPT to sound human. It's the Goldilocks zone 00:32:10.779 --> 00:32:13.960 of training data. It is. So Reddit started selling 00:32:13.960 --> 00:32:17.589 it. aggressively in early 2024 they signed a 00:32:17.589 --> 00:32:19.970 deal with google worth a reported 60 million 00:32:19.970 --> 00:32:22.710 dollars a year they signed a deal with open ai 00:32:22.710 --> 00:32:26.029 so when i talk to chat gpt or to google's gemini 00:32:26.410 --> 00:32:28.210 I'm kind of talking to the ghost of Reddit. You 00:32:28.210 --> 00:32:30.289 are. Your Reddit comments, my Reddit comments 00:32:30.289 --> 00:32:32.369 from years ago, they are now the voice of the 00:32:32.369 --> 00:32:34.930 AI. That explains why the AI can be so incredibly 00:32:34.930 --> 00:32:37.609 confident and so spectacularly wrong at the same 00:32:37.609 --> 00:32:41.509 time. Laughs. Exactly. If the AI hallucinates, 00:32:41.509 --> 00:32:43.349 it's because it learned from a Redditor who was 00:32:43.349 --> 00:32:45.609 confidently hallucinating in a comment in 2012. 00:32:45.849 --> 00:32:48.730 But this integration has real -world glitches. 00:32:48.750 --> 00:32:50.849 We have to talk about the Luigi incident. Oh 00:32:50.849 --> 00:32:53.490 my God, yes. This was in March of 2025. It's 00:32:53.490 --> 00:32:56.029 so funny, but it's also deeply dystopian. So 00:32:56.029 --> 00:32:58.269 Reddit starts using AI for automated moderation. 00:32:58.589 --> 00:33:01.450 They want to rely less on those free human volunteers 00:33:01.450 --> 00:33:03.910 and more on cheap bots to clean up the site for 00:33:03.910 --> 00:33:05.990 advertisers. Makes sense on a spreadsheet. On 00:33:05.990 --> 00:33:10.049 paper, yeah. But AI lacks context. At the time, 00:33:10.049 --> 00:33:12.150 there was a suspect in a high -profile killing 00:33:12.150 --> 00:33:15.750 of a healthcare CEO. The suspect's name was Luigi 00:33:15.750 --> 00:33:19.480 Mangione. Okay. Reddit's brand new AI moderation 00:33:19.480 --> 00:33:22.720 tool flack the name Luigi as being associated 00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:25.640 with violent content or dangerous individuals. 00:33:26.140 --> 00:33:29.420 But Luigi is also Mario's brother from the Nintendo 00:33:29.420 --> 00:33:33.539 games. Exactly. So you had users in gaming subreddits 00:33:33.539 --> 00:33:35.680 talking about the video game Luigi's Mansion 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:38.519 or just discussing Nintendo characters, and they 00:33:38.519 --> 00:33:40.640 were getting their accounts automatically flagged 00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:43.099 or banned for discussing a murder suspect. The 00:33:43.099 --> 00:33:44.880 AI couldn't tell the difference between a video 00:33:44.880 --> 00:33:47.470 game plumber and a fugitive. It's the perfect 00:33:47.470 --> 00:33:49.269 example of what people call inshitification. 00:33:49.690 --> 00:33:52.490 You replace nuanced human judgment, those volunteer 00:33:52.490 --> 00:33:55.190 mods we talked about, with a cheap context -blind 00:33:55.190 --> 00:33:58.269 AI, and the quality of the platform just nosedives. 00:33:58.470 --> 00:34:00.670 And it's not just about silly moderation glitches. 00:34:00.690 --> 00:34:02.809 It's about active influence. The University of 00:34:02.809 --> 00:34:04.950 Zurich study, this one actually scares me. This 00:34:04.950 --> 00:34:07.289 came out in 2025. Let's break it down because 00:34:07.289 --> 00:34:09.570 it's important. Researchers in Zurich wanted 00:34:09.570 --> 00:34:11.929 to see if AI could be used to influence human 00:34:11.929 --> 00:34:15.469 opinion online. So they created a bunch of AI 00:34:15.469 --> 00:34:18.929 bots powered by GPT -4, and they unleashed them 00:34:18.929 --> 00:34:21.710 on the subreddit ChangeMyView. Which is a subreddit 00:34:21.710 --> 00:34:24.210 where people post an opinion like, think pineapple 00:34:24.210 --> 00:34:26.969 belongs on pizza. And they ask other users to 00:34:26.969 --> 00:34:28.750 genuinely try and change their minds. It's like 00:34:28.750 --> 00:34:31.650 the Olympics of debate. It is. And the researchers 00:34:31.650 --> 00:34:33.530 didn't tell anyone they were doing this. These 00:34:33.530 --> 00:34:36.530 bots just started arguing with real humans. And 00:34:36.530 --> 00:34:39.349 what did they find? They found the AI bots were 00:34:39.349 --> 00:34:42.050 effective at shifting people's opinions. In fact, 00:34:42.210 --> 00:34:44.349 they were significantly more persuasive than 00:34:44.349 --> 00:34:46.190 the average human debater on the site. Wait, 00:34:46.250 --> 00:34:48.570 wait. The machine was more convincing than real 00:34:48.570 --> 00:34:52.289 people. How? Why? Because the AI never gets angry. 00:34:52.389 --> 00:34:55.090 It never gets defensive or insulting. It can 00:34:55.090 --> 00:34:57.570 provide perfectly structured, empathetic, fact 00:34:57.570 --> 00:35:01.090 -dense arguments almost instantly. It validates 00:35:01.090 --> 00:35:03.570 the user's feelings. It says things like, I understand 00:35:03.570 --> 00:35:05.590 why you feel that way. That's a very valid point. 00:35:05.849 --> 00:35:08.090 And then it just systematically dismantles their 00:35:08.090 --> 00:35:10.409 logic with data. It kills them with kindness 00:35:10.409 --> 00:35:13.449 and facts. It does. But now think about the malicious 00:35:13.449 --> 00:35:16.719 application of that. If a bad actor, a foreign 00:35:16.719 --> 00:35:19.260 government, a corporation wants to shift public 00:35:19.260 --> 00:35:22.539 opinion on a war or a climate policy or a new 00:35:22.539 --> 00:35:25.239 tax law. They don't need a troll farm of thousands 00:35:25.239 --> 00:35:27.380 of humans in a warehouse anymore. They just need 00:35:27.380 --> 00:35:29.860 one script running a slightly more advanced version 00:35:29.860 --> 00:35:32.239 of GPT -4. And we wouldn't even know. We just 00:35:32.239 --> 00:35:34.860 think we're debating a very polite, very smart 00:35:34.860 --> 00:35:37.420 person online. This is the dead Internet theory 00:35:37.420 --> 00:35:40.280 coming true. We're entering it. If AI is trained 00:35:40.280 --> 00:35:42.900 on Reddit data and then AI bots are posting on 00:35:42.900 --> 00:35:45.500 Reddit to influence humans. We're entering this 00:35:45.500 --> 00:35:48.179 bizarre feedback loop. Is the content you're 00:35:48.179 --> 00:35:50.820 reading written by a human or by a bot that's 00:35:50.820 --> 00:35:52.880 just trained on what humans used to sound like? 00:35:53.039 --> 00:35:55.260 That is a brain melting thought. And looking 00:35:55.260 --> 00:35:59.420 at the really recent past, late 2025, early 2026, 00:35:59.699 --> 00:36:02.960 the walls are really closing in on that old Wild 00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:06.139 West aspect of the site. We've seen a great purge 00:36:06.139 --> 00:36:08.619 of features, private messages, gone, replaced 00:36:08.619 --> 00:36:10.820 by the modern chat system, which is easier for 00:36:10.820 --> 00:36:13.519 them to monitor. The old award system with gold 00:36:13.519 --> 00:36:17.000 and silver. gone. The legacy mobile site i .reddit 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:20.679 killed. The new .reddit design from 2017 also 00:36:20.679 --> 00:36:23.400 killed in late 2024. They are stripping away 00:36:23.400 --> 00:36:25.519 all the old functionality to streamline the ad 00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:28.079 experience and cut costs. And they're facing 00:36:28.079 --> 00:36:31.099 the law. Globally, look at the UK in July 2025. 00:36:31.579 --> 00:36:34.519 The Online Safety Act finally kicked in and Reddit 00:36:34.519 --> 00:36:36.739 had to start implementing age verification for 00:36:36.739 --> 00:36:39.699 users to see NSFW content. Which basically ends 00:36:39.699 --> 00:36:42.260 anonymity for a huge chunk of the site. You have 00:36:42.260 --> 00:36:44.920 to upload your ID to a third party to see adult 00:36:44.920 --> 00:36:47.500 content now. Exactly. And that scares a lot of 00:36:47.500 --> 00:36:49.880 users away. And then in Australia in December 00:36:49.880 --> 00:36:53.119 of 2025, the government banned social media entirely 00:36:53.119 --> 00:36:56.159 for children under 16. Reddit is actually suing 00:36:56.159 --> 00:36:58.340 to overturn that law right now, arguing it. hurts 00:36:58.340 --> 00:36:59.960 their market. And then you have the platform 00:36:59.960 --> 00:37:02.280 wars. Yeah. The mess between Elon Musk and Reddit. 00:37:02.420 --> 00:37:04.940 Right. January 2025, following some political 00:37:04.940 --> 00:37:07.619 controversies involving Musk, over 100 major 00:37:07.619 --> 00:37:10.340 subreddits just banned all links to X, formerly 00:37:10.340 --> 00:37:11.920 Twitter. They just blocked the whole domain. 00:37:12.429 --> 00:37:14.650 And then reports came out that Musk was privately 00:37:14.650 --> 00:37:17.050 pressuring Huffman to moderate content that was 00:37:17.050 --> 00:37:19.269 critical of him on Reddit. It just shows that 00:37:19.269 --> 00:37:21.250 these platforms are no longer islands. They're 00:37:21.250 --> 00:37:23.230 geopolitical battlegrounds. So what does this 00:37:23.230 --> 00:37:26.030 all mean? We've gone from fake users in 2005 00:37:26.030 --> 00:37:30.090 to AI bots in 2026. We've gone from fight the 00:37:30.090 --> 00:37:33.449 power to buy the stock. Reddit conquered the 00:37:33.449 --> 00:37:36.150 Internet by letting people be themselves. For 00:37:36.150 --> 00:37:38.530 better and for worse, it became this incredible, 00:37:38.690 --> 00:37:41.130 messy archive of human thought for the last two 00:37:41.130 --> 00:37:44.429 decades. But now, as it locks down that data 00:37:44.429 --> 00:37:47.429 to sell to AI companies, and as it sanitizes 00:37:47.429 --> 00:37:49.929 its content to please shareholders, do we lose 00:37:49.929 --> 00:37:53.340 the last truly open place on the web? I think 00:37:53.340 --> 00:37:55.760 we might be. We are watching the transition from 00:37:55.760 --> 00:37:58.260 a chaotic public town square to a clean corporate 00:37:58.260 --> 00:38:00.880 shopping mall. It's cleaner. It's safer. The 00:38:00.880 --> 00:38:02.539 floors are polished. But you can't just stand 00:38:02.539 --> 00:38:04.760 on a soapbox and scream anymore. And you certainly 00:38:04.760 --> 00:38:06.800 can't organize a protest against the owners of 00:38:06.800 --> 00:38:09.539 the mall. That is a very sobering thought. I'll 00:38:09.539 --> 00:38:11.400 leave you with this one last provocation, building 00:38:11.400 --> 00:38:13.659 on what we just discussed. We talked about that 00:38:13.659 --> 00:38:18.440 Zurich study, AI bots influencing humans. If 00:38:18.440 --> 00:38:21.280 the internet becomes flooded with AI just talking 00:38:21.280 --> 00:38:24.630 to other AI, And we humans are just the eyeballs 00:38:24.630 --> 00:38:26.789 watching the ads that are placed between their 00:38:26.789 --> 00:38:29.690 automated conversations. What is the point of 00:38:29.690 --> 00:38:32.030 social media anymore? Are we just the batteries 00:38:32.030 --> 00:38:35.170 powering the matrix? Maybe we always were. On 00:38:35.170 --> 00:38:37.570 that cheerful note, check your digital footprint, 00:38:37.690 --> 00:38:39.789 everyone, and maybe upvote some critical thinking 00:38:39.789 --> 00:38:42.809 today. Thanks for listening to The Deep Dive.