Reddit: The App That Encompasses Everything Right...And Wrong With Social Media

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Social Media has never had a more potent presence in people’s everyday lives as it does in our current age.

Nowadays, there is a social media application for almost everything. One such application is Instagram, which has become a place for people to share fragments of their everyday lives through a series of images. Whether Instagram users choose to share a part of their lives that is a complete fabrication for social validation, or choose to portray their most vulnerable selves, or whether they use it simply to share their passions, hobbies, businesses, and so on, the application allows the space to do so.

Twitter offers similar attributes, but with an emphasis on text posts, which have historically either opened up conversations, been used to pass judgement, or have led to controversies that have spurred on the idea of “cancel culture”. Nonetheless, the application creates an interesting, but sometimes troubling collective attitude towards trends, opinions, and so on.

Without dissecting each and every social media application, I believe it safe to deduce that social media serves a multitude of functions, ranging from being a source of news, to creating spaces for passions, personal lives, opinions, and so on, to be shared. However, the prospect of social media is not without its faults. Social media has also contributed to the perpetuation of potentially harmful sentiments, has exposed people to troubling websites and information that they otherwise would not have been discovered, has introduced cyberbullying, and most of all, has warped people’s sense of privacy.

I, however, do not intend to dig further into the triumphs and perils that have come with the rise of social media, and instead would like to shift focus to one particular application that I believe best encompasses everything right and wrong with social media; Reddit. There are a number of available definitions for the term social media, but I will focus on the Cambridge Dictionary definitions.

Accordingly, social media can be described as “websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or mobile phone” or “forms of media that allow people to communicate and share information using the internet or mobile phones”. I am of the opinion that Reddit most accurately represents this intention. The application has different communities that users can join, called Subreddits. These Subreddits can be dedicated to events, aesthetics, films, music, news, and the works. they are spaces for people who share these interests to congregate and discuss these matters, so long as the discussions lay within the community guidelines.

Each Redditor operates under an avatar, so pseudonymity allows free-reign to express an opinion without fear of that opinion infiltrating into their real lives and resulting in being doxxed¹. This pseudonymity, however, comes with its flaws. The pseudonymous format has allowed for controversial communities to be formed and operate without too much consequence (although many of them are typically banned after a while). Furthermore, some non-controversial communities have been infiltrated by Redditors who intend to besmirch the community.

Instances of hate speech that do not explicitly go against Reddit’s Content Policy also happen to slip under the radar without much consequence. Additionally, former controversial communities, that have since been banned, were once able to exist openly. These communities included the following Subreddits: r/beatingwomen, r/Creepshots, r/fatpeoplehate, r/DarkNetMarkets, r/gore and other racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally inappropriate communities. Without delving any deeper, the titles of these communities provide enough insight into the reason for their banning, however, their banning does not mark the end of such ideals being spewed on the application.

Consequently, Reddit has become a prime representation of how the intention of social media has been both successful and harmful in the hands of the human beings that manufactured and developed the concept.

¹.search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.

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