Abstract
Social media platforms are a powerful tool for gathering and mobilising activist communities. Reddit in particular, has hosted a number of these social movements. This paper investigates the unique characteristics of Reddit and how they have stagnated or hampered a movements progress. The voting and Karma systems provides incentives that act contradictory to the types of content movements need to survive. The subreddit architecture leaves movements with few tools to control that content and the behaviour of their community members. We argue that these structures act as barriers to movement growth and act as a ceiling that limit the effectiveness of social movements on the platform.
Full Text
Reddit is one of the largest content aggregator sites on the web, describing itself as the ‘front page of the internet’. Anything and everything is shared on Reddit, from the newest scientific innovations to pictures of bread nailed to trees, a piece of content will find a home. To help users find content related to them, Reddit is divided into ‘Subreddits’, each having a self-ascribed focus of which content should be about. Users on Reddit are ostensibly anonymous, the intent being that the focus of the site should be the content itself, a post should be evaluated agnostic of whomever posted it. This anonymity prompts users to speak to what is truly important to them, resulting in many social movements having a home on Reddit (Zhang & Kizilcec, 2014).Yet despite high traffic and plenty of community generated content, these social movements rarely have any significant impact on the real world (Buyukozturk et al., 2018) (Massanari, 2016). While the community itself plays a role, how Reddit is structured and the incentives in place for content submission also play a major role in the ineffectiveness of these social movements.
Reddit’s users determine what is a high quality contribution and should be seen within in a subreddit. Registered users have the option of voting on other users posts or comments. ‘Upvotes’ and ‘downvotes’ are tracked for each contribution and are taken as a numerical appraisal of how other users view a piece of content called a ‘Karma’ score. While not the only factor, this number has a direct effect on the ranking system Reddit uses to determine how visible a post should be. Subreddits are presented as a list of posts, those with a higher score are shown at the top of the list and therefore the most visible to users who visit the subreddit. The best posts from across all subreddits are collated on r/all, the default subreddit presented to unregistered users. A similar scoring system is utilised for the comments, a higher score will make a contribution more visible to anyone who views a post.
The Karma score has almost no influence on an accounts functionality, outside of Reddit the score is essentially worthless. However, the gamification of activities like making content can act as a major motivator and in cases like Reddit can become the dominating factor for why a user makes a contribution (Alsawaier, 2018). Devising strategies on how to create popular content with as minimal effort as possible has become an endemic problem in subreddits (Richterich, 2021). Subreddits become inundated with score seeking posts and these dominate the community attention. Being the most visible posts means any discussion happening on a subreddit will be determined by what attracts the most votes.
Communities revolve around a shared identity and its natural that commonalities between members become the primary focus of discussion. Take r/antiwork, a subreddit dedicated to work place reform. Members of r/antiwork come from a variety of countries, industries and demographics, what constitutes workplace reform can wildly differ between each individual member. Discussing these points expose the lack of commonality and this results in only a fraction of members being able to discuss or bond together. What they do have in common is being dissatisfied with their work and so these discussions get the most activity and voted to top where users are a part of a shared experience and feel like a community(Greijdanus et al., 2020). Social movements need the reform discussions because these are more likely to translate to physical change, but the voting systems in place push these down and out of a subreddit’s focus.
While astroturfing and spam are prominent on many social media platforms, anonymity and the voting system of Reddit make it particularly vulnerable to propaganda and manipulation (Carman et al., 2018). Making a Reddit account is incredibly easy, a user need only to supply an email, a username and a password after which they can freely participate in many subreddits. A downside of allowing your users to remain anonymous is trusting that they act In good faith. It can be difficult to validate communications and the assumption is that users tell the truth. Those with malicious intent can take advantage of this by amplifying their presence through the use of bots or dummy voting accounts (Potter, 2021). Through these methods, a single person can have the voice of thousands and have a disproportionate influence of a subreddit.
In 2021, Reddit admins removed over a hundred million pieces of content suspected of being manipulated, which included spam and artificial content promotion through the voting system (UndrgrndCartographer, 2022). Admins have admitted the more sophisticated manipulation rings can operate for years while remaining undetected, with the best method to combating them months of manual investigation work and connecting the dots (kethryvis, 2019). On Reddit there is a perception that highly voted content is credible and users believe any information contained within a highly upvoted post (Prakasam et al., 2020). Highly upvoted posts have community approval and therefore reflect community ideals and beliefs. If you can manipulate what’s at the top of a subreddit, you can control what a community discusses.
This can be done subtly, as seen in many politically focused movements where overtime certain topics appear more frequently while others disappear (Carman et al., 2018). As new members approach the community, their first impressions are coloured by these posts and they tailor their behaviour to fit in. Overtime, this can subtly shift the community identity as enough newer members take adopt what they belief to be community beliefs.
Alternatively, manipulators can use technologies to overwhelm a community. The stock market reform movement formed around r/GME had significant issues with vote manipulation as groups flooded the subreddit with anti-movement posts. Authentic posts were buried and discussion between community members was almost impossible. The subreddit had lost their space for discussion and for a community on Reddit this is difficult to recover form.
The subreddit space on Reddit is crucial for the community. Social movements need to be large and combined with anonymous users it can be difficult to form bonds between individuals. Instead, much of a communities’ identity is carried by the space, in this case the subreddit. In a physical space, if a space is lost, individual community members will typically retain contact with a leader or other members if a physical space is unavailable. This doesn’t happen on Reddit, communication happens through subreddits only and if that space is removed they no longer engage (Saleem et al., 2018).
The only widely recognisable subreddit members are the moderators. Each subreddit can have a number of moderators, their role being to monitor content being posted and enforce community rules. They are given a special badge and a user can easily recognise any content made by a moderator. The privileges that moderators possess have given them a de facto leadership status, the ability to approve and remove posts as well as pin posts to the top allow them to control the community conversation(Matias , 2019). Their perceived leadership status means they represent a subreddit and the social movement represents itself to the wider community. However, community members have little to no influence on who becomes a moderators and Reddit offers very few tools to the general community to control a subreddit and the ability to remove moderators is notably absent.
In late January 2022 one of the moderators of r/antiwork participated in a televised interview to discuss the subreddits activities and what the movement was about. This interview revealed that the moderator held beliefs and values that several members of the community did not share. The comments made painted the subreddit as a joke and the movement gained a poor reputation. While users within the subreddit were quick to agree they did not stand with their ‘leader’, communicating that to individuals outside the community was more difficult. The stigma attached to the moderator was now also attached to the subreddit and if the movement was to continue it would now have to also correct the public perception of the community. The public viewed the moderator as representative of the community and normal members had no way of removing the person responsible form their position.
Historically, Reddit has had difficulties with maintaining a single subreddit for social movements. The r/anitwork debacle saw members leaving and forming new communities to distant the movement from the moderator. Having a movement split across many subreddits means any votes for content are also split. Social movements live on awareness and on Reddit and that means gathering enough upvotes to be displayed prominently by the ranking system. The larger a community is, the greater its ability to elevate a post onto r/all. If a community is split, the posts it makes have significantly lower visibility and will struggle to maintain its spot in the public consciousness.
To generate the visibility needed to potentially affect meaningful change a subreddit needs to reach a certain size. As discussed earlier the most popular content is not conducive to action-orientated discussion. Reaching that size often requires attracting community members who aren’t participating to see change, but farm points. Subreddits can grow quite large through this method, but many of the interactions will be focused on the transaction of points. Users aren’t looking to engage, for them the aim is churn through as many short interactions as possible. The result is that larger subreddits present a united front but are made up of a loose collection of individuals with differing motivations and lack the cohesion to make organise any activity outside of the subreddit.
It is important to highlight that while movements have struggled to generate significant tangible change through Reddit, the baseline awareness that a social movement can generate by starting on Reddit is still significant (Manikonda et al., 2018). The voting and awards systems used by Reddit have been shown to be effective at prompting users to engage with the community, taking the first step in making a post or comment (Alsawaier, 2018) . In the short-term, Reddit stands as an excellent place to get the general public aware and talking about an issue or movement.
In newer communities, there has yet to be an established ‘optimal’ content for easy votes and highly voted content is often novel and prompt cooperation between users to discuss and develop new ideas (Burtch et al., 2021). For movements that align with Reddit’s general audience, there is a strong chance this novel content can reach r/all and attract a significant number of new community members. However over time the effect is diminished as awards become more common and the community converges on a favourite type of content. The negative effects of Reddit architecture discussed above then take hold and weigh the movement down. Arguably that’s enough, seeding the idea for change for users to then implement on other platforms is a feasible avenue for real world change.
Social media platforms will likely only continue to grow and as they do, people will converge onto sites such as Reddit to share and discuss pressing social issues. In the short-term, Reddit has demonstrated an important ability to spark the beginning of a social movement. Content advocating a new movement has a feasible chance of reaching a significant audience and establishing an active community through a subreddit. But in the long-term communities will converge onto negative behaviours, preventing digital movements from taking the next step into the physical space. The voting and ranking systems restrict free discussion and leave communities vulnerable manipulation from those who oppose the movement. The subreddit structure also leaves movements with limited leadership to keep movements focused and motivated. Poor leadership often leads to movement members being split across multiple subreddit communities and lacking the focused push a social movement needs. Expecting social platforms like Reddit to facilitate every aspect of a social movement is likely unreasonable, there needs to be alternative platforms or services that meet their needs. Future work may aim to analyse the digital infrastructure needed to transform the digital movement into a physical one.
References
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That’s an interesting and insightful claim you make here: Expecting social platforms like Reddit to facilitate every aspect of a social movement is likely unreasonable, there needs to be alternative platforms or services that meet their needs. I think it would be interesting to see if this will change in the future. Certainly not every aspect could be successful as some movements disappear almost overnight. People move on quite quickly to other concerns. I like too how you describe Reddit so concisely. I like too this comment you make – However over time the effect is diminished as awards become more common and the community converges on a favourite type of content. It does seem to try to keep any movement or new topic going is more a game of chance and what it is about. Well done Raymond, very interesting and your claims supported by evidence make it really good to read.
Thanks for the kind words Michael, I’m glad you enjoyed the paper!
The disposable nature of Reddit is something I would have like to explore further given time. Like you say, people rarely focus on a single issue for long and bounce between them. People rarely join just the one subreddit, users are often a part of dozens of different communities on the platform and so likely don’t dedicate a significant amount of time to just one of those.
Hi Raymond
This is a really interesting paper, and you’ve raised some interesting points about Reddit’s structure and how it can hamper its users. From what you’ve described, it seems quite hierarchical, with the role of moderator being unnecessarily omnipotent. I’m curious, how does one become a moderator, are you elected by your group? It’s very odd that a moderator can’t be ‘un’-elected, it would seem to be an obvious oversight by the platform, I can’t think of a good reason why they would implement such a practice, it’s not very democratic.
Hi Diana,
Thanks for your kind words and interest in my paper.
The idea of free speech is an interesting problem many platforms need to deal with. You want to create a platform where users can say whatever they want, but practically most communities have boundaries they want to put into place. The option Reddit has chosen is giving a handful of people authority, but as you point out the method in selecting these individuals is key. In general, you have two pathways to becoming a moderator. You can create your own subreddit, where you will become a moderator for it. For an established subreddit, you need to be invited by an existing moderator. In rare cases, Reddit admins (who work for the company behind the site) will step in where there is an extended absence or legal/policy violations. As mentioned, removing a moderator is difficult, generally through self-removal or via other mods. In theory, the solution is to make another subreddit if issues arise, but as I point out for established communities this is difficult to achieve.
Social movement communities can also be based around controversial topics which tend to draw particularly nasty individuals. As a moderator, it’s your job to confront the worst of a community and with no tangible compensation many just do not want to deal with it. Finding volunteers who are willing to scroll through thousands of comments is quite difficult, it requires a specific mindset to become a moderator. Reddit has an issue with what are known as “Power moderators”. If you scroll through the moderator lists of larger subreddits you will begin to see many recurring names and it makes you wonder how much influence this system gives a small number of people.
A democratic system is interesting but I wonder how it would work in practice. I mention manipulation in my paper and I feel like any democratic system could easily be taken advantage of, imagine if countries just let anyone vote in their elections.
Thanks again Diana for your thoughts.
Hey Raymond, this was a great paper to read and I appreciate this new perspective on the limitations of social movements through social media. Personally I’ve had a bias towards social media’s ability to generate, as you stated in your paper, global levels of awareness and bring to light issues that the general public wouldn’t have known about otherwise, as well as the other feats of collaboration through online communities. Regardless, I would like to know if you had any possible solutions or steps towards communities bearing tangible responsibility for social movements. When you discussed the r/antiwork subreddit, you explained the multiple demographics present within any one subreddit, one of those being country. Do you think changing to a location based algorithm would help the relevancy of content seen at the top of subreddits?
Hi Alleyne,
Thanks for taking the time to read my paper.
There is nothing wrong with focusing on the positive aspects of something, its important to acknowledge social media strengths.
Your question is interesting, I think it is important to remember that many social media platforms are not directly designed around social movements, the population has converged to them largely for their ubiquity and ease of use. Tools to manage social movement issues would likely be incredibly niche and seen as unnecessary for the vast majority of Reddit users. Location based algorithms are already present on Reddit, although they tend to be fairly broad, acting on a country scale. Reception has been mixed, some users turn to Reddit because there are no local communities that resonate with them. To answer your question directly, using location to help present relevant content might help users find one another in a social movement subreddit. But location is just one aspect I mentioned, to resolve all these issues would likely require users creating profiles. Passively giving your information through metadata is seen in a different light to actively filling a profile. I suspect the general audience for Reddit would not be okay with removing the anonymous aspect of the site.
Hi Raymond,
Great paper and showcases how important sub-reddits and Reddit as a platform itself can play a huge role in the building of social movements online. I read all of the r/antiwork stuff around the same it came out and while I thought a lot of it originally came from a place of genuine problems or harms with workplaces that posters were talking. It then eventually got taken over by other political actors with their own agendas and hierarchies, that turned it from a place of venting frustration and organisation, to a place of political propaganda and distrust. Moderators on Reddit have a large amount of responsibilities in how they manage various posts, rule and regulations of both the sub-reddit itself and the platform, but due to the nature of online moderation being a free endeavour, I don’t think outside dedicated insular communities, you’ll find a moderation team that keeps up with everything 100%. I do think the up-vote and down-vote system on Reddit is a fantastic feature, as well as the reward system in helping get the best and most well thought out comments and posts to the top of sub-reddits and discussion, but unfortunately the manipulation around those systems, despite the positives is vast. When looking at the example of r/GME and the events of January 2021 around GameStop, the effects of that negatively amongst retail traders was awful and the misinformation spread around how “the little man fighting the big guy” was laughable at best, especially without a working knowledge of hedge funds and the process of shorting. Like I discussed in my paper, social media constantly has this “potential” around what it could do, but we’ve yet to see evidence around what it is currently doing to create real world change. Nevertheless, loved reading the paper, your research and points were spot on.
Best Regards,
Jack
Hi Jack,
Thanks for your kind words.
I suppose one of the biggest flaws on an anonymous system like Reddit is the reliance on trust, believing that people are communicating in good faith. As you have pointed out, the highly political nature of social movements makes achieving this level of trust almost impossible as people with other agendas aim to derail any momentum in the movement. You would expect good moderation to be able to combat these issues, but as you mention its a thankless job and many moderators are exposed to abuse from those who disagree with them. Also, as show in the r/antiwork case, sometimes moderators do not align with the subreddit as a whole so its unsurprising that this movement ended up directionless.
In regards to the voting system, I agree that in general its a simple and intuitive way to manage what gets seen in a subreddit. But when the stakes are high, like in a social movement the vulnerability to malicious activity is heavily exposed. I guess the question is how important are these social movements to Reddit as a platform. Reddit hosts a variety of communities, social movements make up only a small amount of that. I struggle to justify making changes that might compromise what currently works for other subreddit to cater to social movements. I think its a common issue among many social media platforms that they have grown far beyond any initial scope and suddenly find themselves trying to manage issues they are ill prepared for.
Social Media’s potential is interesting to think about, perhaps as things grow worse a greater sense of urgency will eventually overcome the issues i presented.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Hi Raymond,
Great paper. It was really insightful especially for someone who has only opened a reddit account in the last couple of weeks. I do think that users on reddit can cause social movements, these thoughts have come from the way upvotes are portrayed especially for new users. As a new user I can see how upvotes and downvotes could entice other users to believe any material depending on the amount of votes it has. Do you think Reddit would have more of an impact on social movements if users weren’t anonymous?
Kind Regards,
Jordan
Hi Jordan,
Thanks for taking the time to read my paper.
The voting system is great for how intuitive it is, more votes equals more visibility and it makes users feel like they are controlling what gets discussed. I agree Reddit and r/all in particular is a good place to get a snapshot of what is currently important and being discussed at any point in time.
Anonymity is such a core facet of Reddit, changing it would dramatically change how users perceive and use the platform. From a business perspective, I suspect Reddit would lose a significant amount of users if they were required to provide or link some kind of identifying information to participate. Those that do stay would likely change how they interact and with which communities they would be comfortable public interacting with. I think given that social movements are for the majority of users a small aspect of their Reddit experience, such a move would be an overall negative for the platform. To answer your question directly though, I could see addressing some issues. Manipulation and false content would likely be more difficult to produce, requiring a link to a real person. Moderators would also see more scrutiny, I could see certain qualifications being required to oversee a social movement community. Having said that, I think some social movements have members that only participate because of their anonymity. Movements around sexuality and sexual identity are bolstered by anonymity as being publicly expose could have social and in some areas, legal consequences. Removing the anonymous aspect of Reddit would likely see these movements leaving the platform altogether.
As I have hinted at in other comments, a big issue for Reddit is that it never intended to be a host of large scale social movements, but its popularity and prominence as a platform has led it to being co-opted as makeshift meeting place. Social movements are important but the platform is understandably hesitant to make major changes just to support a relatively small part of the Reddit experience.
Thanks again for your thoughts and I hope you enjoy your time on Reddit.
Hi Raymond,
I don’t have a lot of experience with Reddit, however your paper was very interesting and provided great insight.
The idea of how certain people such as moderators can influence what is likely to be discussed in certain communities is particularly interesting. I think I would compare it to how social media companies have the power to influence peoples ways of thinking on their platforms, just on a lesser, more community level. It raises the question of who should be deserving of having this influence, and your discussion around it being difficult to remove moderators from their positions of power is somewhat scary that that can continue to have this influence even if the entire community might not think they are deserving.
Thanks for the interesting read,
Ben
Hi Benjamin,
Thanks for taking the time to read my paper.
That’s a fair comparison and a good question, someone has to be in charge and Reddit has delegated to the community. A corporate overlord is at least consistent in chasing the greatest value, but the individual is much more volatile. I think something I failed to emphasise is that this is a voluntary position, finding someone who is willing to monitor thousands of comments in their spare time is a difficult prospect and when you do there are questions about their motivations. Power positions like this tend to attract people who are undeserving and relish in being able to control other’s behaviour. It’s a tough task, made only worse by having to get it right the first go around.
If your first impressions of Reddit come from my paper than I think I may come across as overly harsh. I wanted to comment on a specific aspect of Reddit – the side where users have congregated around social issues and the impression is that they want to make a change. For these areas, I think the issues I have highlighted are significant issues that prevent these movements from making significant progress. For the other communities on Reddit, the stakes are lower and there is a greater chance to encounter genuine people who might share an interest. Like you bring up, when its being in charge of a movement trying to initiate worker reform, you want to make sure that person is trustworthy and reliable. But when that community is about pictures of cats, I can understand Reddit implementing the structures they have in place.
Thanks again for your thoughts.