Steve Huffman, chief executive of online chat platform Reddit, is now a self-confessed “Supreme Court nerd”. After what the company acknowledges as its “wild” early days, the 35-year-old co-founder is now trying to clean up the edgy website known for provocative discussions and fringe groups, while revamping its advertising offering in a bid to woo big brands and move towards profitability.
To that end, Mr Huffman has turned to the history books.
“How do we wrestle with the fact that there are ugly conversations happening in our country when the founding principle is on free expression?” he said. “These aren’t new issues. I look to what people smarter than us have thought about [them].”
The strategy is not just ethical but commercial.
According to Mr Huffman, Reddit has doubled its revenue growth year-on-year over the past two years, and is targeting that same pace for its core business this coming year. Staff headcount has doubled over the past year to about 500.
Meanwhile the group has clinched several high-profile content and advertising deals recently, including with the National Football League and with Google ahead of the launch of its Stadia cloud gaming platform in November.
Reddit has also joined the ranks of Silicon Valley’s so-called unicorns, raising $300m earlier this year in an investment round led by China’s Tencent, giving it a valuation of around $3bn.
But tempering extreme conversation while also maintaining Reddit’s reputation as a radical bastion of free speech is a delicate balance, especially as many among its 330mstrong user base are quick to accuse it of censorship.
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The site’s darkest corners include communities peddling conspiracy theories, and far-right groups that propagate racist and sexist content, or promote violence — material that has only become more problematic in the wake of attacks such as the Christchurch mass shooting, in which a white supremacist gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand.
The company only this week revised its bullying and harassment policies, following concerns that they had been too narrow, and enforcement was patchy.
‘There are ugly conversations happening’
Founded in 2005, the self-declared “front page of the internet” is known as a hub for esoteric memes, sardonic humour and gamers. One of the most popular websites in the US, it is also home to thousands of “subreddit” chat forums, where varied discussion topics range from woodworking to low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets.
Now, Mr Huffman is leading the charge to attract brands to advertise their wares inexpensively on the site, at a time of growing scrutiny over Google and Facebook’s ads duopoly.
As part of his pitch, he claims a unique audience that tends towards millennials and Generation Z: according to Comscore data from 2018, 17 per cent of Reddit’s users do not use Facebook, 28 per cent are not on Twitter and 43 per cent do not have Snapchat.
