Reddit is a social network aggregation formed by college roomates in 2005. In 2006, American mass media company, Condé Nast Inc., acquired the site. 2008 was dominated by the launch of countless subreddits, pages created for a specific topics, eventually establishing Reddit as a mainstream source for web content rating and discussion when pageviews tripled in late 2010. In 2012, Reddit was spun out into a re-incorporated independent entity with its own board, in charge of its own finances. In 2017, Reddit averaged 542 million monthly visitors, ranking as the fourth most visited website in the U.S. and number eight in the world.

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The social media platforms ranked above Reddit are Facebook, averaging 2.2 billion monthly active users and YouTube, averaging 1.5 billion.

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It comes as no surprise to see these numbers from Facebook and YouTube, two organizations who have established themselves as leaders, supported by the social media leaderboard becoming increasingly limited to only those businesses that continue to evolve in the face of obsolesces, as Facebook and YouTube continue to.

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Eli Pariser presented a TED talk and has written a book on a fundamental issue in social media known as the “filter bubble”. In a sense, the “filter bubble” is an outcome of intelligent marketing strategies used by social media platforms to keep users active. The idea of a “filter bubble” pertains to the elimination of content that does not fit in with an individual's interests, determined through the point of view of the content management systems.

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The concept of the “filter bubble” outcome is evident in most, if not all, social media platforms in one way or another. The systems behind Facebook simply exclude videos and posts that do not compare to recent activity on a given account. Pariser, politically progressive, began his TED talk with a personal example, explaining his observation that posts from his conservative friends were no longer present on his timeline. Overtime, the “filter bubble” outcome may bolster an alternate sense of reality due to increased biased exposure.

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Upon visiting YouTube, whether it be using a personal computer or mobile device, users are initially presented with a list of recommended videos, located below the search bar and advertisements. According to YouTube’s product chief Neal Mohan, more than 70 percent of the time, videos being watched on YouTube are along a chain of recommendations driven by artificial intelligence. While this may be considered “bubbling”, these recommendations do not block the user’s access to alternate information, a different outcome from the systematic setup of Facebook.

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Reddit users choose the content they are exposed to by subscribing to subreddits that peak their interests. This gives people the opportunity to create their own “filter bubble”, although there are a few ways in which, ultimately, the issue of the “filter bubble” outcome does not have as significant of an impact on Reddit.

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“I learn more from reading the comments than the actual post, the comments introduce me to new ideas and provide different points of view. Ultimately this helps me gain a more nuanced understanding of the topic.” said junior MIS major Ronan Fitzgerald. There is no limit to the viewpoints one may be subject to while reading comments, one of many advantages to interactive media.

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There are subreddits specifically designed for discussion, including “askreddit”, where a user presents a question to all other users, “askmeanything”, where people who have an interesting quality allow others to ask them questions and “changemyview”, where the original poster encourages users to think critically about a given subject.

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With moderators assigned to keep the subreddits clean of inappropriate or unreliable information, subreddits such as “news” actually becomes a reliable source of information, with most posts leading directly to an article from a reliable news source.

Reddit is both a product of, and a response to, a culture that demands to choose their own entertainment.