Reddit at 20: A Look Beyond the Upvotes

by Daniel Gauss

I waited until after Reddit’s 20th anniversary to post this article, hoping others might offer critical reflections on what the platform has become. Much of the “Reddit at 20” coverage, however, was somewhat fawning, as if many writers had received and worked from the same PR press kit.

In the interest of diversity of opinion and free, civil discourse, I’d like to offer a more critical assessment of a platform whose business model often amplifies impulsive reactions and group identity bias, rather than fostering the values that enable free expression or meaningful community engagement.

There are a number of criticisms of Reddit online already, yet I would like to focus more on the platform’s broader social consequences. I do not want to be contrarian or snide, but I want to trace how certain design choices and norms may be quietly cultivating values that undermine genuine discourse, empathy and moral engagement. I believe Reddit’s influence, however unintended, deserves a closer, more candid examination.

So, I’d like to contribute toward a more balanced view of this popular website and aspects of its design that hinder the kind of communication a democratic society depends on. It might seem overstated to suggest that Reddit carries democratic weight, but when millions rely on it to share news and opinions, and engage in civic discourse, it functions less like a website and more like a public square.

Part 1

Despite its branding as “The Front Page of the Internet” (now “The Heart of the Internet”), I would argue that Reddit has never fulfilled its potential as a force for positive social impact. It remains one of the most visited websites in the U.S., behind only Google, YouTube, Facebook and Amazon, yet a glaring gap persists between what Reddit claims to be and what it actually is.

Its success, in fact, stems largely from the platform’s tendency to gratify psychological impulses and desires that would be better recognized and resisted than indulged in. As other critics have pointed out, Reddit remains rife with algorithmic censorship, coercive groupthink, opaque moderation and a structural hostility to nuance, difference and intellectual depth.

When Reddit launched in 2005, its mission was to create a tool for sharing and ranking web content through upvotes and downvotes. Founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, financially backed by Y Combinator, used fake accounts and fabricated posts to simulate early engagement, a tactic they’ve openly admitted. Yet, today, Reddit bans users it suspects of similar behavior. Ohanian once recalled: “You would go to Reddit and there’d be tons of content, but it was all me and Steve, submitting links and voting them up” (Inc., May 2012).

Reddit initially catered to a young, libertarian, white male internet crowd, clinging to a “free speech at all costs” ethos, until the hate speech and harassment became too extreme, and too alienating, to ignore. While addressing the problem to some degree, the founders ultimately seemed to prioritize monetization above all else. In the end, Reddit became just another neoliberal venture, seemingly willing to cash in regardless of any concerns of social harm it might inadvertently cause.

Between 2015 and 2020, Reddit finally banned some of its most hate-filled/racist subreddits, prompting backlash from users who wanted the site to remain the Wild West of the internet. In a revealing moment, co-founder Steve Huffman declared, “We are not the free speech wing of the free speech party.” This seemed a strategic pivot, not a moral awakening, aimed at salvaging the platform from implosion while still retaining its unruly core.

Reddit’s foundational problem is that it grew out of a narrow demographic with socially negative and often exclusionary values. That early user base set the tone and created the culture. Reddit now struggles to grow into a more diverse and welcoming space, but even today, newcomers face an entrenched algorithm and culture that often resist change.

In 2016, during a peak of harassment from r/The_Donald, Steve Huffman was caught secretly editing insults aimed at him, turning them back on commenters. He later apologized, but the episode raised troubling questions about Reddit’s leadership and platform integrity. If the site’s founder acted like a petulant keyboard warrior, who would provide a moral compass for Reddit? Would it always be an unguided free-for-all of unchecked impulse, rather than a space for balanced discussion?

Under Huffman, Reddit pursued aggressive monetization, expanding ads, introducing premium memberships and filing for an IPO in 2024. In 2023, a steep hike in API prices triggered mass protests from developers of third-party apps, tools many moderators relied on to manage their subreddits.

The API change punished developers who had supported Reddit for years, ignored the needs of moderators and was widely seen as a cash grab to prep for the IPO. In response, thousands of subreddits went dark temporarily in protest, revealing a deep rift between Reddit’s leadership and the unpaid labor force that sustains the site.

Part 2

Reddit began without a pro-social vision to guide it, and its admins seem to have enforced rules selectively, sometimes bending them for their own benefit. Given its size, reach and focus on monetization, Reddit may be amplifying social harm by normalizing adversarial discourse, rewarding outrage and discouraging meaningful dialogue. It could be that new users aren’t arriving to save or reform the platform; instead, they’re being shaped by and conforming to its worst tendencies.

Structural flaws, cultural toxicity and algorithmic design have turned what could have been an ideal forum into a space that punishes curiosity, discourages difference and prioritizes conformity. In the following sections, I’ll outline Reddit’s most persistent flaws.

Downvoting as Virtual Censorship

In theory, Reddit’s voting system lets the best ideas rise to the top. In practice, it enables users to bury dissent. Posts that challenge dominant or conventional views often vanish beneath waves of downvotes, not because of poor reasoning, but simply for offering a different perspective.

Academic research on negative feedback confirms what many Redditors already know: a few early downvotes and unsubstantiated judgments (e.g., “This article really sucks!”) can poison perception. When a small group reacts with malice, others often follow, reluctant to support an alternative viewpoint. It’s a bullying, mob-like approach to discourse.

While downvoting might make sense on Yelp or Amazon, it’s disastrous for any platform hoping to foster thoughtful dialogue. This isn’t democratic debate, it’s digital silencing. Dissent isn’t engaged, it’s deleted. Downvoting doesn’t improve quality, it makes a person feel good about eliminating opinions they do not agree with.

Aggression Drives Away the People You Want

Reddit has long struggled with hostility, particularly toward women and minorities. Despite various efforts, the platform still fails to attract a balanced, diverse user base. Why would an emotionally intelligent, formally educated, respectful professional spend time on a platform where ridicule and aggression are normalized? Reddit doesn’t just tolerate unjustified criticism, it incentivizes it.

Nuanced or thoughtful posts are often met with sarcasm, condescension or outright contempt. The platform rewards quick jabs over deep thinking. What could have been a site for genuine discourse has become a stage where the loudest, most caustic voices can dominate.

Comments Over Content

Reddit favors reaction over creation. Users often earn far more “karma” from commenting than from posting original content. It’s not uncommon to see someone with, say, 300 “post karma” but 75,000 “comment karma.” Many seem to comment primarily to express what they already believe and to quash what they don’t.

Even Reddit’s onboarding reflects this. New users often can’t post articles until they’ve commented enough, effectively training and rewarding people to react before they contribute. Addiction to commenting based on preconceived ideas seems rampant. An article might attract numerous comments, but mostly from people who haven’t even read it. The algorithm rewards early comments, locking threads into narrow trajectories long before thoughtful reflection or response can occur.

Reddit presents itself as an information-sharing hub, but, in reality, it’s a comment-sharing engine and much of what gets shared isn’t original or constructive, but reactive, mean, repetitive and often without justifying reasons.

Few People Read the Articles

One of Reddit’s worst-kept secrets is that many users don’t actually read the articles they comment on. “Didn’t read the article, but…” is a common disclaimer. Writers on Medium, Substack, and personal blogs have noted the pattern: a post that gets 10,000 Reddit views might earn only 100 to 500 actual clicks on the article link.

Reddit is not truly a platform for sharing articles or ideas, its currency is anonymous comments. It’s a platform for entertainment, where knee-jerk responses and ideological mimicry dominate. The click-through rate (CTR) hovers around 1.3%. Users often parrot whatever their in-group promotes, frequently with cruelty or condescension. This rewards a reactive, unreflective public. It’s highly profitable, but it’s not what we need in a world that is burning.

Moderators with Unchecked Power

Moderators, unpaid volunteers, wield sweeping powers within their subreddits. They can delete posts, ban users and reshape communities according to personal whim, often with little to no accountability. This system has created thousands of micro-fiefdoms, each ruled by cliques enforcing their own ideological boundaries.

These unpaid volunteers are a big reason Reddit makes over $1 billion a year. In 2020, research estimated that Reddit’s moderators collectively contributed around 466 hours of unpaid labor per day, equating to roughly $3.4 million worth of moderator labor annually (based on U.S. wage rates).

Anonymity and Cruelty

While anonymity can enable candor, it often fuels cruelty. Reddit makes it easy to attack others without consequence. Harassment and trolling still plague many subreddits, not because they can’t be stopped, but because they’re tacitly tolerated. Moderators rarely prioritize civility and users hesitate to intervene. Behind screen names, people behave in ways they never would face-to-face. There’s a thin line between free speech and free abuse, and folks on Reddit frequently cross it.

Silent Deletion and Hidden Control

Reddit also practices a subtle but pervasive form of censorship. Posts often vanish without explanation, sometimes removed by bots, other times by moderators. In testing for this article, I posted a link that was initially awarded “nice article” status, only to find it removed three days later by Reddit’s filters, with no explanation given. This silent deletion disorients users. They don’t know what rule they broke or who judged them. A platform that claims to be transparent and community-driven often acts like an unaccountable bureaucracy.

Part 3

The Psychology of Reddit Use

Reddit isn’t successful because people are sharing and reading texts or discussing issues deeply. It thrives because it satisfies several core psychological needs with minimal effort.

Dopamine from Novelty and Validation

Reddit’s infinite scroll and vast array of subreddits deliver constant novelty. Users flit from meme to meme, headline to headline, never bored, always one click away from something new. Upvotes and karma provide cheap, instant social validation, a hit of status for a joke, a quip or a mean-spirited, anonymous takedown.

The Illusion of Intellectualism

Reddit gives users a sense of being informed and thoughtful without requiring actual depth. Reading top comments often replaces reading the linked content itself. This allows users to feel as if they’re engaging in smart discourse, without doing the work.

Identity Through Bias Groups

You’re not just online, you’re a libertarian, a gamer, a cat rescuer, a nihilist, a Tesla hater. You don’t need to prove your worldview is valid, you just need to join the right echo chamber.

Catharsis and Moral Superiority

Some subreddits thrive on outrage and judgment. Users experience a moral thrill by condemning strangers, reinforcing their own sense of decency. In 2013, Redditors took this offline by falsely identifying missing student Sunil Tripathi as the Boston Marathon bomber. His name and photo spread across the site and media. A few days later, he was found dead by suicide. 

Low-Effort Participation

You don’t need to create or think deeply to be part of Reddit. Just upvote or downvote based on how you immediately feel. Reddit’s genius, and its problem, is that it turns surface engagement into a semblance of community. It flatters users into thinking they’re smarter, funnier and more virtuous than they are, while quietly discouraging complexity, disagreement and true reflection. The result is a platform that feels psychologically rewarding but degrades discourse, empathy and attention, manipulating users into behaviors that feel good but corrode both individual character and the commons.

Part 4

At 20 years old, Reddit is still treading water. After a steep drop in valuation and mounting user backlash, it’s scrambling for new revenue streams, often at the expense of moderators and longtime contributors who have been working for free. Reddit wants to be taken seriously as a marketplace of ideas and a hub for debate, but let’s be honest, for many users who value civility, critical thinking and genuine dialogue, Reddit has become a hostile, shallow disappointment.

The platform is trapped in a balancing act of trying to court new users while placating a core base steeped in negativity, snark and conformity. Any real reform risks alienating the old guard and hurting profits. So, it seems that Reddit keeps pandering to the worst instincts of its user base while pretending to be something more enlightened. Reddit often defaults to cruelty and shallow entertainment. Its structural and cultural flaws run deep.

Reddit’s growing popularity only makes its failures more corrosive. We decide what kind of world we live in through what we choose to reward. Civility, insight and restraint are not optional, they’re the cost of a world worth living in. Reddit’s descent into self-indulgent ease may be profitable, but does it inspire us to confront our individual flaws, grow in empathy or strive for a more just world?

If we succumb to and call our lowest instincts “free speech,” we lose what makes speech worth having. Insight, restraint, tolerance for difference and compassion must become our default. Otherwise, we are complicit in designing a world that reflects our worst impulses and not our highest ideals.

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