Reddit – the Last Good Social Network
What are you looking for on a social network? In my opinion, the definition is quite simple: you should be able to select topics and accounts that interest you and easily check them whenever you open your network. This was the original promise of many networks: Facebook will connect you with your friends, new and old; Instagram will show you photos of these people; and Twitter will bring you fun, interesting, and important news from everyone you want.
That’s how it all started, but social media is in a bad place these days: X (formerly Twitter) isn’t even safe to use anymore ; Meta allows artificial intelligence to run rampant on Facebook , and it’s hard to get Instagram to show you content from your friends .
If you’re looking for a social network that actually delivers on the promises the platforms have sold us, I believe Reddit is one of the last good networks. That doesn’t mean it’s great.
It’s all about the subreddits
What has always set Reddit apart from others are its subreddits. There is a subreddit for just about any interest or topic you can think of, big or small. If you’re into Calvin and Hobbes, there are over 700,000 other people on Reddit who want to talk about the comic too. If you love coffee, you can choose between subreddits like r/espresso (555,000 subscribers) or r/keurig (6,900 subscribers). (I’m telling you, there’s a subreddit for everything.) Reddit reports that there are more than 100,000 active communities on the site , and some estimates put the total number of subreddits at over three million . You might start following a subreddit dedicated to a general topic (r/music) and then decide to follow smaller subreddits that focus on specific niches ( r/futurebeats , r/indieheads , r/blackmetal ).
Since there are so many targeted interests on the site, there have likely been conversations about topics and questions that you currently want answers to. This is why many of us add “Reddit” to the end of a Google search: Someone else’s iCloud settings were also inaccessible , and they know how to fix it; New Yorkers can help you figure out how to get from LaGuardia Airport to Manhattan using public transportation ; and this gamer will show you how to make sure you’re always playing the PS5 version of the cross-platform game. The amount of general knowledge on the site is staggering, and since the subject matter is often very narrow, you will find a lot of useful information on a wide variety of topics. (We’ll get back to this topic before you run to the comments to roast me.) Of course, not all subreddits are designed for serious interests, either. There are plenty of subreddits dedicated to the lighter side of life (ahem, memes). You can also curate this side of Reddit to your liking, but be careful.
Once you have set up your Reddit account with all your interests, you will be presented with the “front page of the Internet.” You open reddit.com and find new articles, posts, and discussions based on what you want to see. It’s amazing how similar the experience today is to what it was many years ago: this CGP Gray video of the place from about 10 years ago is still largely accurate .
Reddit is far from perfect
Reddit is good, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect (or even great). The site is certainly not X, and it doesn’t leak hate speech from all sides, but there are still plenty of communities where conversations are, well, unproductive. In many ways, curating your Reddit feed makes a huge difference (in my day-to-day work on Reddit, I don’t see X-quality hateful comments), but it’s concerning and worth paying attention to. Honestly, the site has come a long way over the years in dealing with terrible subreddits and communities. (It used to be so bad.)
Reddit has a huge user base ( about 73 million daily active users ), meaning that the larger communities are truly huge and notoriously bad. (r/funny is anything but.) If you join a site and only browse the subreddits they offer by default, you’ll likely come away wondering what the hell all the fuss is all about on Reddit. The same advice that worked for the site 15 years ago still applies today: remove bloated default subreddits and create a list of small but active subreddits that fit your needs. Whether these subreddits perform well depends on the individual community moderators who voluntarily manage their subreddits . While this means that the quality of subreddits – and the moderators themselves – varies greatly, when you find a well-run subreddit, remember to treat your mods with respect.
But even if the discussion appears to be of good quality and in good faith, it should always be taken with a grain of salt, especially regarding important information. Like any other place on the internet, Reddit is full of anonymous people who may or may not know what they’re talking about. It’s okay to learn something new about your smartphone or solve a transit question, but don’t believe everything you read about things like science, history, or most importantly, health. (Reddit is not your doctor.)
I’m also not a fan of many of Reddit’s corporate solutions. The site has raised its API rates to ridiculous levels , forcing most third-party apps to shut down (RIP Apollo). The site’s app, in comparison, is much less intuitive and fun to use, and the site’s current design is controversial. Luckily, there are third-party clients , and if you don’t like the “new” Reddit, old.reddit.com is fine. But perhaps worst of all, the company is working to sell your data to companies to train AI models . It’s… not a good thing, and I hope it changes, but Reddit hasn’t been paying much attention to its users’ opinions lately.
Reddit isn’t perfect, but it’s also what you think it is. This site continues to be a fantastic resource for like-minded communities and remains as entertaining as ever. Moreover, such a huge user base means that the site is much more successful in its operations than some of the new players entering the scene. There are other promising platforms to try (Mastodon in particular, as well as Bluesky and Threads), but the benefits of Reddit’s popularity are hard to beat. It’s hard to find a topic that isn’t covered in the subreddit. If so, create one yourself and you might find a small community forming around it.
Reddit has made some gains this week, with the company’s shares up 48% after the first day of its initial public offering, and while that number dipped slightly on the second day, the markets seem to love Reddit as a stock. He even opened up the IPO to Reddit users themselves , which was a fitting gesture towards the people who actually make Reddit valuable. Personally, I hope Reddit’s strategies will be successful if they continue to allow us to communicate within our communities without much interference.