social-media

"I read that some American youths believe people in China have freedom of belief. Some [had] even downloaded the Chinese phone apps Xiaohongshu (RedNote in English) [and] Weibo. Because I fled China to live in a free society, I found this situation baffling—even amusing."

"Some have called (YouTube) the biggest and the smallest stage. The most public place in the world, from the privacy from our own homes: YouTube has been used for many things: a political soapbox, a comedian's stage, a religious pulpit, a teacher's podium, or just a way to reach out to the next door neighbor or across the world. To people we love, to people we want to love, or people we don't even know."

"We didn't even know how to describe our new product. To generate interest, we just said it was a new kind of dating site. We even had a slogan for it: "Tune in, Hook up." No one did."

"Over at reddit.com, we rewrote the site from Lisp to Python in the past week. It was pretty much done in one weekend. (Disclosure: We used my web.py library.) The others knew Lisp (they wrote their whole site in it) and they knew Python (they rewrote their whole site in it) and yet they decided liked Python better for this project. The Python version had less code that ran faster and was far easier to read and maintain."

"Subreddits that represent clear ideological agendas (r/TheRedPill, r/FatPeopleHate, r/The_Donald) tend to have higher Gini coefficients as well. … Typically, the top 10% of contributors' comments garnered between 70% and 85% of the total vote scores for comments in a subreddit in a given month."

"There were a half dozen or so subreddit communities that I had never heard of before that had posts sitting on the front page of Reddit. The common thread among all of them seemed to be rooted in getting angry at or mocking other people. … The first one that I noticed was /r/MurderedByWords, which featured screenshots of social media interactions containing a "response which completely destroys the original argument in a way that leaves little to no room for reply." There was /r/PublicFreakout, "dedicated to people freaking out, melting down, losing their cool, or being weird in public." Perhaps needing the least explanation was /r/IAmATotalPieceOfShit, where users post social media screenshots or videos of others who they think fit the namesake for the community. Meanwhile, over in /r/IAmVerySmart, the users mock "people trying too hard to look smart.""

"After the Isla Vista massacre, a subreddit called 'Elliot Rodger Fans' was quickly created, though it was banned by Reddit soon afterwards."

"Open-source makes it hard for us to develop some features "in the clear" (like our recent video launch) without leaking our plans too far in advance. As Reddit is now a larger player on the web, it is hard for us to be strategic in our planning when everyone can see what code we are committing."

"Political movement subreddits tend to be more active, particularly during the initial phase of excitement over a candidate. As then-US-presidential-candidate Donald Trump gained momentum in April of 2016, roughly 62% of r/The_Donald's 90,000 subscribers commented on the subreddit; by early 2019, after Trump had been elected President, 7% of subscribers were commenting. In mid-2015, 20% of SandersForPresident's 62,000 subscribers were commenting, rising to 32% by March 2016 before dipping to 13% by July of 2016."

"The popular social networking and news-sharing site Reddit once hosted a group called Game of Trolls. Its rules were simple: if you successfully upset someone on Reddit without them realizing they were being trolled, you won a point. If you were identified as a troll, you lost a point. The highest scorers were listed on a leaderboard. … Game of Trolls was eventually banned by Reddit; a highly unusual step for the otherwise liberal site, but testament to the pervasiveness and persistence of the Reddit trolls."

"By late October, Huffman's policy team, along with trust and safety and legal, had solidified their tougher policy on violent posts. The new rule: "Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals." It opened the door for Reddit to ban another extensive list of subreddits. These were mostly far-right-leaning and Nazi-sympathizing forums and those that glorified harm or death, such as r/selfharmpics and r/PicsOfDeadKids. … Also banned were r/europeannationalism, r/nazi, and r/killthejews, and a few sites that mocked, parodied, or stemmed from r/CoonTown. Animal abuse, harm, or bestiality comprised another significant subset of the list."

"/r/MensRights—the "Men's Rights Activism" hub mentioned earlier—professes to be a site of measured social advocacy, but other subreddits make little effort to sugarcoat their misogyny, opting instead to engage in open, unapologetic bullying. /r/TumblrInAction mocks the left leaning, feminist "social justice warriors" said to populate Tumblr. /r/SRSSucks critiques the vocal feminism of /r/ShitRedditSays. /r/TheRedPill—reappropriating a metaphor for awakening from the 1999 film The Matrix—advocates for hegemonic masculinity and a return to traditional gender roles. /r/FatPeopleHate—until it was banned in June 2015—described itself as a space for "shitlords oppressing fatties" and housed photos of individuals deemed worthy of mockery due to their weight."

"Over the years, the site has been condemned by critics because users have shared inappropriate images and content that has included hate speech against particular groups. Reddit users have posted pictures of dead children. Moreover, people are often harassed for who they are based on their religion or their ethnicity. For example, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks hate groups, at least 46 active subreddits are devoted to white supremacy, the racist idea that white people are superior to all other races."

"The Daily Beast, in an exhaustive report, investigated a forum known as "Red Pill" on Reddit.com. It found that [Robert] Fisher, writing as "pk_atheist," created the forum in 2012, posting: "Let's talk about exactly what it means to be a sexual man in the era of feminism," and, "In a culture where the only thing standing between you and prison is whether the last girl you (expletive) decides to lie about rape, these are REAL questions that I think are being ignored.""

"It's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time."

"A campaign staffer took a photo of the president, and [Teddy] Goff posted it on Reddit along with the headline "I am Barack Obama, President of the United States—AMA." … Obama dug in. He typed straight into Reddit, "Hey everybody—this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville, and am looking forward to your questions." … The questions for Obama, simultaneously, were building up at an accelerating rate. Within ten minutes, there were 278 comments. By 4:15, before Obama had even answered just one question from users, Reddit's servers were sputtering."

"While the political ideology is predominantly liberal, there are countless communities for conservatives, libertarians, anarchists, socialists, etc. Despite the overrepresentation of male users, female users have a wide variety of communities to join, including ones for women's rights, motherhood, parenting, etc. This pattern repeats, resulting in a site that can cater to almost any political ideology, age, gender, and hobby."

"When Obama first ran for president in 2008, he knew the impact the internet and social media sites, such as Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube, could have on the race. By the time of his Reddit appearance in 2012, the president had mastered the technology, posting nearly four times as much content as Romney and, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, "was active in nearly twice as many platforms.""

"I'm confident that Reddit could sway elections. We wouldn't do it, of course. And I don't know how many times we could get away with it. But, if we really wanted to, I'm sure Reddit could have swayed at least this election, this once."

"In March 2007, the first subreddit dedicated to a political figure—r/obama—was created. … Initially, posts in r/obama linked to mainstream news outlet's coverage of Obama, some of which was critical or at least skeptical of the candidate. … By the end of summer 2008, r/obama more closely resembles the kind of candidate advocacy subreddit that became a recurring Reddit motif (e.g., r/Sanders4President, r/The_Donald, r/MurderedByAOC). By this time, the subreddit featured more self-posts from professed Republicans who were ready to vote for Obama and motivational posts that encourage people to donate to the campaign, and post titles took on the partisan, affect-laden style pioneered by The Huffington Post, a popular blog at the time."

"Obama was re-elected for his second term in November 2012, defeating Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and was inaugurated on January 20, 2013. … This AMA was done while President Barack Obama was running for his second term. When asked for his opinion on the experience of the Reddit AMA, he gave it an enthusiastic "not bad." Presidential seal of approval achieved!"

"[Robert] Fisher seemed obsessed with the negative effects feminism was having on his dating experience. … It was this plight of navigating a post-feminist sexual marketplace, one where "the entirety of the male experience [is] wrought with rejection and ego-destroying experiences," that led Fisher to establish The Red Pill."

"Due to the younger demographic of many of Reddit's users, some of its content can seem immature, crude, or inappropriate. There is very little censorship on the site and pictures containing nudity or grotesque injuries are posted regularly (although they can be easily hidden)."

"The board approved removing r/fatpeoplehate, r/HamPlanetHatred, r/transfags, r/NeoFAG, and r/ShitN---ersSay. Notably not on this list was the overtly and enthusiastically racist r/CoonTown, which had about ten thousand subscribers. … Within minutes, the banned communities popped back up, having been reregistered by moderators using different names. The sequel subreddits weren't particularly creative: r/fatpeoplehate2, r/fatpeopleantipathy, r/wedislikefatpeople."

"Reddit's administrators had just deleted a subreddit called r/Pizzagate, a forum for people who believed that high-ranking staffers of Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, and possibly Clinton herself, were trafficking child sex slaves. The evidence, as extensive as it was unpersuasive, included satanic rituals, a map printed on a handkerchief, and an elaborate code involving the words "cheese" and "pizza." … The conspiracy theorists, in turn, claimed that they'd been banned because Reddit administrators were part of the conspiracy."

"But let's take the infamous picsOfDeadkids example. The actual content of that subreddit is mostly autopsy photos. Obviously it's a troll subreddit and created to get a reaction, and I'd guess 98% of redditors think it's gross/offensive etc. But what if the name of the subreddit was r/autopsyphotos or r/doyoureallywanttogointocriminalforensics and they were sincere in their discussion of these images? Would some of that 98% now be ok with it? I would bet at least some would. What if it wasn't kids but adults? Or historical autopsy photos only? The point is I don't want to be the one making those decisions for anyone but myself, and it's not the business reddit is in."

"Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen: These are very complicated issues, and we are putting a lot of thought into it."

"/r/MensRights content is unrestricted on Reddit, and so it occasionally makes its way into the /r/all feed, or into the suggested subreddits of users. With over 288,000 members, participants are active in many parts of Reddit, and other users are likely exposed to /r/MensRights content through their comments, user pages and post histories. /r/TheRedPill has a different path, as content from the subreddit no longer appears in the /r/all feed or other non-subscribed aggregate feeds since being quarantined in 2018."

"Before the turn of 2018, r/The_Donald had reached half a million subscribers. Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign's digital director, had claimed social media was the reason "we won this thing." He wrote on Reddit that "members here provided considerable growth and reach to our campaign." The_Donald again celebrated Trump's win with a thread cataloging its greatest hits of viral imagery and boasted, "Remember when we memed a man into the White House?""

"There is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don't have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all."

"Defendants did not create the Challenge; rather, they made it readily available on their site. Defendants’ algorithm was a way to bring the Challenge to the attention of those likely to be most interested in it. In thus promoting the work of others, Defendants published that work — exactly the activity Section 230 shields from liability."

""Pakistan Wants to Ban TikTok for “Immorality”" by Marco Respinti, Bitter Winter (January 6, 2025)"

"You can't use TikTok for now"

""How TikTok Killed The Preteen Era by Evita Duffy-Alfonso, The Federalist (January 6, 2024)"

"We believe the combined company can grow on an incredibly strong foundation, attract top talent, hire top technology providers, and roll out significant advertising and business development campaigns."

"We believe the combined company can grow on an incredibly strong foundation, attract top talent, hire top technology providers, and roll out significant advertising and business development campaigns."

"$1 billion sends an important message to Big Tech that censorship and political discrimination must end. America is ready for TRUTH Social, a platform that will not discriminate on the basis of political ideology, As our balance sheet expands, TMTG will be in a stronger position to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech."

"$1 billion sends an important message to Big Tech that censorship and political discrimination must end. America is ready for TRUTH Social, a platform that will not discriminate on the basis of political ideology, As our balance sheet expands, TMTG will be in a stronger position to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech."

"Groupthink: Fletcher took listservs mainstream with OneList, a company he founded in 1997. Users turned to OneList to create, administer, and find mailing lists through a simple Web-based interface. By 2000, when Yahoo! bought the company for $420 million to establish Yahoo! Groups, OneList had millions of subscribers and was sending out billions of emails per month"

"and it claims it intends to parody the "supposed objectivity and accuracy, elitism, and stupid edit wars"."

"Created in 2004, Wikipedia's evil twin was intended to keep record of flame wars, 'famewhores,' and the feuds of blogging platform LiveJournal."

"The site won't be taken down, but the cost is extremely burdensome"

"In lulz we trust."

"Instagram spokesperson according to Meta Verified arrives in India, now honors 'legacy' verified badges (June 7, 2023)"

"We are expanding the test to India starting today and will roll out on Instagram and Facebook to everyone eligible there over the next couple weeks"

"President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!"

"Mr. Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over T.V. doing the same - Nice!"

"Really sad that Republicans would allow themselves to be used in a Clinton ad. Lindsey Graham, Romney, Flake, Sass. SUPREME COURT, REMEMBER!"

"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"

"How can Crooked Hillary say she cares about women when she is silent on radical Islam, which horribly oppresses women?"