Week 3: The front page of the Internet

Pretty much everyone who has spent some time online is familiar with the giant social news platform or the so-called front page of the Internet - Reddit. And the name isn't too far-fetched as it still is one of the most popular websites in the world. It's essentially a website with a massive collection of forums, where people can share articles, news, and other content. The website is organized into millions of "subreddits", communities within the Reddit community to discuss certain topics or to look at specific content. All subreddits start with "/r" which some from the URL that Reddit uses. Some of the most popular subreddits being r/funny for funny GIFs and memes, r/AskReddit where people can ask anything from the Reddit community, and r/gaming for anything gaming-related. Those are the more mainstream ones but there are subreddits like r/RealBeesFakeTopHats which is dedicated to.. well pictures of real bees with fake top hats and r/BreadStapledToTrees. You can probably figure out what the last one consists of. So you can see there is a subreddit for literally everyone and every topic.

Reddit has occasionally been the topic of controversy due to the presence of subreddits devoted to very controversial content, including subreddits r/Creepshots and r/jailbait. In 2012 the CEO of Reddit even stated "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it." Yet quite a lot of subreddits have gotten taken down due to their explicit content. 

The recent controversy around Reddit is connected to a subreddit where people discuss stock and option trading - r/wallstreetbets. In general, the subreddit is well-known for it's aggressive trading strategies and profane nature, but in January it was widespread on all news outlets as the short squeeze on GameStop was initiated here. Essentially the r/wallstreetbets community came together and all bought an excessive amount of stocks causing a rapid increase in the prices of GameStop with a lack of supply as no one was willing to sell their stocks. Even Elon Musk tweeted out the subreddit shortly after the GameStop closed up. Some people claimed that what the Reddit community is doing is illegal when pretty much the same strategies take place every day on the stock market. 

So all in all Reddit is hands-down the biggest massive social link aggregator community. Everyone can find something they are interested in and speak their mind or find further information about something and it has had a massive influence on all sorts of online communities, would it be for the better or for the worse.

Sources:

https://www.businessinsider.in/photo/80603476/How-GameStop-became-the-perfect-meme-stock-for-r/WallStreetBets.jpg?imgsize=956616

https://i.redd.it/8bels7zob4e61.jpg

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/history-of-reddit/

https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/15/8964995/reddit-free-speech-history