The announcement at the time of this writing has a 50% upvote rate, making it a “controversial post” as far as upvote to downvote ratios go. Why? You can probably guess: it threatens the community element that makes Reddit special.
By and large, the Reddit community was pretty unhappy with the announcement. Their posts will show up on their followers’ front pages, and they have an individual profile page that is much more user-friendly than digging around someone’s post history. But that is about to change in a big way.Īdmins recently announced that they’re rolling out a new profile feature that allows redditors to follow individual users. You can only post content to a group, and individual users rarely get a “following” so to speak. It isn’t atomized or individual centered. There are a variety of reasons that Redditors may think of Reddit as a community in a way that social media websites do not.
Regardless of my own definition of community-a social unit based on voluntary association, shared beliefs and values, and contribution without the expectation of direct compensation-and the extent to which it does or does not fit this definition, the fact is that there is an important affective component to community, and many users certainly feel that connection. I feel less confident making that argument for Reddit, primarily because so many users consider it a community. I have previously argued that Facebook is not a community. They like that the model for Reddit is about content aggregation and forum discussion, they like the relative anonymity they have, and they like being able to curate their experience by subscribing to subreddits tailored to their interests. Redditors appreciate that the site isn’t a social media network. Many Reddit users also consider Reddit a community in a way other sites are not. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, it isn’t just a branding concept. Whether talking about specific subreddits or the site as a whole, the discourse of community is powerful. Users and administrators alike constantly refer to Reddit as a community.
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