Vine
1/1/23
Reddit (2005)
Reddit (2005)
The founding of Reddit in 2005 has always been interesting as it wasn't even the original idea of founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
The pair had originally pitched Paul Graham and Y Combinator on the idea of a service that allowed customers to place their restaurant orders via text message.
Paul wasn't a fan. Instead of pitched the pair on creating "the front page of the internet". Users would be able to submit links to the site which would then be voted up and down by the other users. This ensured that the best content — at least by the community's standards — would rise to the top.
Today, Reddit is consistently one of the top visited websites in the entire world.
Surely, that must cost Reddit an arm and a leg to staff a community team capable of managing so much user-generated content, right? Wrong.
Reddit would quickly adopt the concept of "subreddits" or individual communities within the site itself.
Each subreddit would be moderated by volunteers who would set and enforce their own varying rules and guidelines for that specific community.
Genius. Reddit could take a mostly hands off approach in terms of moderation while individual communities would fuel the widespread growth of the overall platform.
Or so they thought.
While this army of unpaid volunteers has helped keep the platform running relatively smoothly over the years, they have now shown just how much power they truly have.
Reddit recently announced major updates to their API pricing — charging $12,000 for every 50 million requests.
The response has been… a revolt.
Some of the largest 3rd part apps have announced that they will be forced to shut down due to these changes.
On top of that, over 7,000 individual subreddits have set their communities to private in protest of these changes. That means that some of the largest communities on the site are no longer accessible and may remain that way for some time (at least 48 hours for the majority).
With Reddit gearing up for an IPO, the obvious power and reliance on unpaid moderation is now surely going to raise some eyebrows.
The community giveth and the community taketh.
The founding of Reddit in 2005 has always been interesting as it wasn't even the original idea of founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
The pair had originally pitched Paul Graham and Y Combinator on the idea of a service that allowed customers to place their restaurant orders via text message.
Paul wasn't a fan. Instead of pitched the pair on creating "the front page of the internet". Users would be able to submit links to the site which would then be voted up and down by the other users. This ensured that the best content — at least by the community's standards — would rise to the top.
Today, Reddit is consistently one of the top visited websites in the entire world.
Surely, that must cost Reddit an arm and a leg to staff a community team capable of managing so much user-generated content, right? Wrong.
Reddit would quickly adopt the concept of "subreddits" or individual communities within the site itself.
Each subreddit would be moderated by volunteers who would set and enforce their own varying rules and guidelines for that specific community.
Genius. Reddit could take a mostly hands off approach in terms of moderation while individual communities would fuel the widespread growth of the overall platform.
Or so they thought.
While this army of unpaid volunteers has helped keep the platform running relatively smoothly over the years, they have now shown just how much power they truly have.
Reddit recently announced major updates to their API pricing — charging $12,000 for every 50 million requests.
The response has been… a revolt.
Some of the largest 3rd part apps have announced that they will be forced to shut down due to these changes.
On top of that, over 7,000 individual subreddits have set their communities to private in protest of these changes. That means that some of the largest communities on the site are no longer accessible and may remain that way for some time (at least 48 hours for the majority).
With Reddit gearing up for an IPO, the obvious power and reliance on unpaid moderation is now surely going to raise some eyebrows.
The community giveth and the community taketh.
