According to the ranking site Alex, the top three websites that get the most traffic in the United States are Google, YouTube and Facebook. The New Yorker writes that the more surprising thing is what is in fourth place: Reddit. Its popularity seems at odds with the fact that many Americans have only vaguely heard of the site and have no real understanding of what it is. To those who are devoted to the website, Reddit is proudly untamed and is one of the last Internet giants to resist homogeneity. But where is the line between monitoring the internet and free speech? Many social networks have “Bizzaro networks,” as The New Yorker says, where people who are banned from one site join another and dub themselves as the strongholds of free speech, while in practice the sites are often used for hate speech. There seems to be a consensus that social media platforms need to reign in their users, but how far is too far? Steve Huffman, Reddit’s C.E.O., has said that he is confident Reddit, if they really wanted to, “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.”
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