Registered users commonly referred to as "Redditors" submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are then voted up or down "upvoted" or "downvoted" by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called "subreddits".
Submissions with more upvotes appear towards the top of their subreddit and, if they receive enough upvotes, ultimately on the site's front page. Reddit administrators moderate the communities. Moderation is also conducted by community-specific moderators, who are unpaid volunteers.
As of December , Reddit is the 8th most-visited website in the world. According to data provided by Similarweb , Reddit has received praise for many of its features, such as the ability to create several subreddits for niche communities [ 20 ] [ 21 ] and being a platform for raising publicity for numerous causes.
The idea and initial development of Reddit originated with college roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in , who attended a lecture by programmer-entrepreneur Paul Graham in Boston during their spring break from University of Virginia. The team expanded to include Christopher Slowe in November The passage from Aaron Swartz's blog post "Rewriting Reddit" [ 38 ] reveals that the switch from Lisp to Python, specifically using the web.
Despite facing skepticism and critique from the Lisp community, the change was justified by the efficiency and clarity Python provided for the project. This initiative not only influenced the technical evolution of Reddit but also contributed to the broader web development community by inspiring other frameworks and remaining a significant part of Reddit's history.
