History
Reddit was founded in 2005 by Aaron Swartz, Steve Huffman, and Alexis Ohanian, and is also available in other languages. Some Reddit users call themselves redditors, while subreddit moderators mods. Subreddits are directed towards all sort of things, like education, being funny, cute pictures of animals, internet memes, etc.
Subreddits
Discussions on Reddit are organized into user-created areas of interest called "subreddits", with individual moderators (any user can be one) holding sweeping powers to ban users and dictate content with a range of tools, particularly automated filters.
Controversies
Reddit has been a subject of controversy as it has many subreddits run by those distributing disinformation and explicit materials, including subreddits r/Creepshots, r/jailbait, and r/greenandpleasant. Reddit has also been long been criticized for uncontrolled antisemitism. Antisemites, especially Holocaust deniers, across the political spectrum are active on Reddit.
On February 20, 2025, an independent journalist announced his findings that over 110 subreddits were controlled by around 30 users who took advantage of the forum's loopholes to systematically distribute antisemitic disinformation for terrorist groups. The methods involve "vote brigading, subreddit moderation, and content manipulation".
Reportedly, the compromised subreddits include r/Documentaries (20M members), r/therewasanattempt (7.2M), r/PublicFreakout (4.7M), r/Fauxmoi (4.3M), r/MorbidReality (1.1M), r/ToiletPaperUSA (440K), r/Thatsactuallyverycool (277K), r/Palestine (270K), r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM (184K) and r/boringdystopia (94K), from which misinformation was funnelled to smaller subreddits and beyond Reddit to influence public opinion, while alerts to the company were repeatedly ignored. In particular, the journalist noted:
The central locus of the network is a 270,000-member subreddit called /Palestine. A Discord server with the same name [...] identifying “comments sections that need more pro Palestinian commentary,” mass upvoting of anti-Israel posts, and downvoting of pro-Israel posts (a practice known as “vote brigading”). The Discord has separate task forces for Quora, TikTok, Instagram, X, and Wikipedia.
