Can Reddit be tamed? Probably not

Jefferson Graham | USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — This week, a group of 200,000-plus vocal users of the Reddit social website succeeded in getting its embattled interim CEO to resign.

You may be wondering: What exactly is Reddit, anyway? It's not in the top 10 of most visited websites, or even the top 50, according to industry measurement firm comScore Media Metrix. And it's site isn't appealing to look at — a jumble of links with few graphics that remind one of the pre-AOL era.

What's more, most major advertisers shun it.

Reddit's reputation is that of a place where young males, basking in their anonymity, can say anything in language that is, by turns, rude, foul-mouthed and downright mean.

It was this culture that former CEO Ellen Pao attempted to clean up, unsuccessfully.

On social networks like Facebook where people use their real names, a positive, safe-for-work image of their lives is presented. On networks like Reddit, folks can let it all hang out, and say whatever comes to mind.

"The anonymity creates a tornado," says Alex Kruglov, founder of SmileTime, a social network for fans of TV shows and movies. "It creates a really mean and bullying kind of behavior."

In a "Ask Me Anything" session with Reddit users Saturday, new CEO Steve Huffman, co-founder of the site, said he wanted to clean up the vitriol.

"Harassment and bullying affect people dramatically in the real world, and we want Reddit to be a place where our users feel safe, or at least don't feel threatened," Huffman said.

Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, doubts Huffman will be able to tame the beast. "It won't go away," he said.

Meanwhile, it's not all name-calling and screaming at Reddit.

Izzy Frankel, a 17-year-old Los Angeles high school student, goes to Reddit every day to get the latest on soccer, video games and politics.

The comments section can some time get nasty, he says, but it's also where he finds out what's going on.

"I don't like news sites," he says. "They have too many pop-ups to get your attention and too many ads."

Reddit is a community of links, and categories (called subreddits) about everything from cats and tech, to something called "Fat People Hate," with pictures of large folks and people making fun of them.

That was the subreddit Pao deleted, that caused the initial controversy.

"It wasn't against the site rules, but it was un-called for," says Max Patrick Schlienger, who moderates one of the Reddit communities.

Folks who create subreddits like that are in the tiny, minority, he says. Some 98% of the Reddit community are "normal, great people," he says. "As with any large group, there will be people who do distasteful things."

He thinks the solution, going forward, is not to delete subreddits, since the community clearly won't stand for it, but to give positive reinforcement to the great categories, to "applaud the people for having positive ones."

Reddit, which calls itself the Front Page of the Internet, cites monthly traffic figures of 18 million in May, with 153 million page views.

Websites like eBay, YouTube and BuzzFeed love it, because the forums send lots of traffic to their sites.

But while it has a loud following, "it doesn't have the reach of a really large social network like Facebook (more than 200 million monthly users in May) or Twitter (over 100 million)," said Bajarin. "It's a small group compared to them."

Reddit is a "legitimate platform for people of like minds to communicate, but it will never draw the interest of the general public," he said.

Despite the uproar this week, Reddit isn't going anywhere.

The controversy with Pao started when she closed several of the Reddit forums, for apparently getting out of hand.

But overnight, "Reddit alternatives," became one of Google's most searched for queries this week, and tons of message boards started popping up, all over the world.