I was feeling particularly annoyed at a certain type of person online. The easiest way to describe this type of person is someone whose interests are more strategic than personally intuitive. A person whose interests accumulate with an awareness of how they will reflect back onto them. A person who follows nodal points not from an innate desire, bu... See more

“Most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust,” Brereton argued, therefore “we resort to using Google, and appending the word ‘reddit’ to the end of our queries.” Brereton cited Google Trends data that show that people are searching the word reddit on Google more than ever before.

Most who use the Reddit hack are doing so for practical reasons, but it’s also a small act of protest—a way to stick it to the Search Engine Optimization and Online Ad Industrial Complex and to attempt to access a part of the internet that feels freer and more human.

“The internet, as we have known it, has evolved from a quaint, quirky place to a social utopia, and then to an algorithmic reality. In this reality, the primary task of these platforms is not about idealism or even entertainment — it is about extracting as much revenue as possible from human vanity, avarice, and narcissism.”

iron law of the internet: any movement or subculture will be judged by its most cringe members

At the same time, we’ve seen enough social networks come and go that we now understand the consequences of making content moderation an afterthought. Ask Reddit, which just a few weeks ago thought to explicitly ban hate speech — years after nurturing communities of racists, nonconsensual porn distributors, and other blights on the internet.