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Reddit is a social news aggregation and discussion website which was established in 2005 and has slowly transformed to become one of the largest sources of news, information, content rating and discussion regarding various sorts of topics on the internet.
Reddit, like most other social media platforms, came into existence due to two students namely Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. It was first intended for online food marketing but gradually grew into the huge content sharing website it is now.
Reddit has amassed a lot of praise for being a site where people can find like-minded individuals and various information regarding a multitude of things can be shared as well as discussed.
However, there has also been a fair share of criticism because of some anonymous stories where people allegedly confess some of the crimes they committed along with gory details.
Despite the likelihood of these stories being quite low, people have raised their concern over the safety and integrity of the site. Along with this, there have been an increasing number of subreddits where propaganda and misinformation regarding various things–with horrendous racism, are being seen.
Regarding all this, Iftekharul Islam, a student at the University of Dhaka–who is a regular user of Reddit and is a moderator of a few subreddits, told the writer,
"One of the best things about Reddit is you'll get a lot of diversified opinions about almost any topic that ever existed and people can give good advice on certain things regarding your lifestyle which is often quite handy.”
Although there are a number of bad sides to being on Reddit, says Iftekharul. A lot of people will deliberately provide you wrong advice in order to mislead you but they ultimately get downvoted.
Another thing is, you can't stop anyone from posting obscene content or being abusive in Reddit unless admins intervene.
“Only pro-nazi things get banned by Reddit automatically. I think the Reddit authority should come up with a superior algorithm in order to ban things which are quite uncomfortable for people using the platform," added Iftekharul.
Despite some of the drawbacks, Reddit has been described to be hugely beneficial for most users.
Introverts, who sometimes find it quite difficult to socialise in real life, have found their own space in Reddit and in most cases, a pretty wholesome online community.
Despite the few flaws the site has, it definitely is one of the best applications out there when it comes to the transmission of information.