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Connor Zimmerman
8 October, 2013
Babcock
9:45-11:00
Reddit: An Analysis of the Front Page of the Internet
The Internet has been a goldmine of information ever since its conception,
but the question that has arisen from this vast database of knowledge is can it be
THAT reliable? Well, through a study of a microcosm of the culture of the Internet, a
community based around a single website called Reddit, this question might just
possibly be answered. Through its diverse users, Reddit allows both sides of a point
of view, however the question remains of the validity of these points of view.
In order to actually delve into the community of Reddit, one must first learn
of the breakdown of the website itself. The simplest way to describe Reddit is a
website made up of thousands of blogs on whatever subjects you wish. One can type
out the URL reddit.com/r/ and after the forward slash include a topic of your choice.
For instance, there exists subreddits dedicated to movies, pictures, videos, art,
politics, news, and etcetera. Each subreddit has a set of “administrators” given
duties by the supervisors of Reddit, which choose which content gets to be put on
the “front page” of the sub-blog, according to rules that they themselves have set up.
Users create accounts and post information in the form of links or hand-typed posts
to the different “subreddits”, one of the thousands of blogs. When you click a link or
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post, the link to the post turns from a bright orange to a periwinkle blue,
determining tha that you have “read it”.
But with thousands of blogs, even the “front page of the internet” needs a
kind of front page. As a result, the supervisors wanted the most popular posts to
reach the front page, so as a result, they they developed a unique rating system to
determine which links are put onto the front page for the viewing pleasure of the
entire public. This rating system consists of “upvotes” and “downvotes”, or a
positive rating or negative rating, and the amount of votes that one receives from
this rating system determines whether or not it is put onto the front page.
From this unique voting system came competition, and out o; people try to
compete to receive the most “upvotes” and receive a score called “karma”. Positive
“karma” comes from the amount of upvotes you receive from posts or comments.
People then have an incentive to scour the internet for the most interesting pictures,
information, or news that they think the rest of the community would find
interesting. However, this is where an ethical controversy rears its head:
occasionally, people post content that they are not responsible for creating in order
to receive positive results. For instance, let’s say a person posts a picture of a dog
that they do not own. People do not know this person personally, so they decide to
“upvote” the user because their picture is adorable. Other users occasionally police
the wrongful posting of “original content”, but not all information is called out on its
validity. As a result, one must keep in mind when travelling through Reddit that it is
possible that the information can be wrong or incorrect. This is the best and worst
part about this website: anything can be posted.
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Most of the time, however, one must trust in the other users to know what
information should be paid attention to, based on what goes to the front page. But
this is where the culture of Reddit sprouts, for just reading through some posts on
the more serious posts, one can easily determine the mindset of the average user:
highly liberal.
So is Reddit ethical? The answer is no. Many times there exists a high
population of left-wing thinkers that “downvote into oblivion” posts that they find
clash with their own beliefs. This creates a silent majority in Reddit, a majority of
people called “lurkers”. Lurkers exist because they feel that others would only
drown their opinions out or vote them down so they never see the light of day again.
Some vote, but most don’t or don’t even own an account. Thus the culture that
sprouts from Reddit’s conversations is only a percentage of the actual populace, but
this percentage controls the culture of Reddit. It is because of this percentage that
most of the conversations, pictures, and other interesting content exist on the
website. Thus Reddit receives a poor rating when it comes to ethos, or it’s actual
credibility.
So, let’s examine the average “Redditor”. He or she is looking to appeal to the
general population, so they might decide to post something that has been trending
lately, let’s say pictures of cats. A Redditor must be able to have a grasp on some
form of pathos and know exactly what the reader wants to read; otherwise their
information will only be drowned in a sea of bad feedback. Logically, the Redditor
must
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However, for those who choose to make posts one of the most important
aspects of Reddit that every person who chooses to make a post is kairos. Timing is
absolutely important for two reasons: first because the faster any sort of news is
posted to the website, the more likely it is that you receive positive feedback. News
is a pretty large portion of Reddit, where people give credible news websites and
post their comments on the happenings of today. The beauty of this system is the
fact that because the system is incentivized, people have a reason to post the latest
breaking news to the website, and more often than not Reddit is faster than the
average news network. It was the Reddit community that knew about the bombings
at Boston before they were being broadcasted on every major news network. The
community is its own news network.
Secondly, kairos is important because Reddit is an international website,
with high populations in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Therefore, the
time in which someone posts information directly correlates with the amount of
positive feedback that they receive. For example, a person who posts during the
early morning of one country and late night for another will not receive much, if any,
feedback. However, someone who posts within the timeframes where most
Redditors would be awake, then they will receive positive feedback.
From a logical perspective, this also biases the information posted on the
front page. Some information appeals to the masses in Australia, while other bits of
information are moot or even neglected. However, there are universal trends that
spread throughout Reddit, such as pictures of cats, that every culture could enjoy, so
there is a spike in the amount of this kind of information. In brief, a Redditor must
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have a sense of logos when it comes to the time in which they post their information
because it could appeal to different cultures.
Reddit is a community with a wide variety of community members, however
this community is controlled by a percentage of the masses that sway the
conversation one direction or another. Therefore, Reddit can be seen as a
persuasive website, displaying the information that is biased towards the culture
over other information. However, that is not to say that what is posted on Reddit is
untrue. The links to different websites offer some semblance of credibility, it is only
the layout of the website that biases the information itself. Overall, the comm