Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, pictured, revealed the letter thanking users for supporting net neutrality. Obama thanks Reddit in hand-written letter

President Obama thanked technology enthusiasts on Reddit, the popular content-sharing site, for their activism on net neutrality the old-fashioned way — with a hand-written note.

On Thursday, Alexis Ohanian, one of the site’s cofounders, revealed a letter he’d received from the president thanking all of the site’s users for supporting his administration’s push to regulate the Internet like a utility.


“Thanks Redditers! Wish I could upvote every one of you for helping keep the internet open and free,” Obama wrote, using a term specific to the site in which a user helps popularize a post.

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to pass sweeping regulations, proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, for Internet service providers.

Reddit has hosted numerous forums on the issue, pushing to keep Internet service providers from offering different speeds for websites that could afford to pay a premium.

The new rules pitted a wide array of technology companies that rely on the Internet to connect them with customers against Internet service providers that wish to profit off of premium, higher-speed Internet lanes.

President Obama has long supported so-called net neutrality rules and expressed this opinion during a 2012 “Ask Me Anything” forum on Reddit.