Reddit

"Before the turn of 2018, r/The_Donald had reached half a million subscribers. Brad Parscale, the Trump campaigns digital director, had claimed social media was the reason "we won this thing." He wrote on Reddit that "members here provided considerable growth and reach to our campaign." The_Donald again celebrated Trumps win with a thread cataloging its greatest hits of viral imagery and boasted, "Remember when we memed a man into the White House?"

"Political movement subreddits tend to be more active, particularly during the initial phase of excitement over a candidate. As then-US-presidential-candidate Donald Trump gained momentum in April of 2016, roughly 62% of r/The_Donalds 90,000 subscribers commented on the subreddit; by early 2019, after Trump had been elected President, 7% of subscribers were commenting. In mid-2015, 20% of SandersForPresidents 62,000 subscribers were commenting, rising to 32% by March 2016 before dipping to 13% by July of 2016."

"Its not our sites goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time."

"When Obama first ran for president in 2008, he knew the impact the internet and social media sites, such as Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube, could have on the race. By the time of his Reddit appearance in 2012, the president had mastered the technology, posting nearly four times as much content as Romney and, according to the Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism, "was active in nearly twice as many platforms."

"Obama was re-elected for his second term in November 2012, defeating Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and was inaugurated on January 20, 2013. … This AMA was done while President Barack Obama was running for his second term. When asked for his opinion on the experience of the Reddit AMA, he gave it an enthusiastic "not bad." Presidential seal of approval achieved!"

"Open-source makes it hard for us to develop some features "in the clear" (like our recent video launch) without leaking our plans too far in advance. As Reddit is now a larger player on the web, it is hard for us to be strategic in our planning when everyone can see what code we are committing."

"Over at reddit.com, we rewrote the site from Lisp to Python in the past week. It was pretty much done in one weekend. (Disclosure: We used my web.py library.) The others knew Lisp (they wrote their whole site in it) and they knew Python (they rewrote their whole site in it) and yet they decided liked Python better for this project. The Python version had less code that ran faster and was far easier to read and maintain."

"In March 2007, the first subreddit dedicated to a political figure—r/obama—was created. … Initially, posts in r/obama linked to mainstream news outlets coverage of Obama, some of which was critical or at least skeptical of the candidate. … By the end of summer 2008, r/obama more closely resembles the kind of candidate advocacy subreddit that became a recurring Reddit motif (e.g., r/Sanders4President, r/The_Donald, r/MurderedByAOC). By this time, the subreddit featured more self-posts from professed Republicans who were ready to vote for Obama and motivational posts that encourage people to donate to the campaign, and post titles took on the partisan, affect-laden style pioneered by The Huffington Post, a popular blog at the time."

"Im confident that Reddit could sway elections. We wouldnt do it, of course. And I dont know how many times we could get away with it. But, if we really wanted to, Im sure Reddit could have swayed at least this election, this once."

"A campaign staffer took a photo of the president, and [Teddy] Goff posted it on Reddit along with the headline "I am Barack Obama, President of the United States—AMA." … Obama dug in. He typed straight into Reddit, "Hey everybody—this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville, and am looking forward to your questions." … The questions for Obama, simultaneously, were building up at an accelerating rate. Within ten minutes, there were 278 comments. By 4:15, before Obama had even answered just one question from users, Reddits servers were sputtering."

"While the political ideology is predominantly liberal, there are countless communities for conservatives, libertarians, anarchists, socialists, etc. Despite the overrepresentation of male users, female users have a wide variety of communities to join, including ones for womens rights, motherhood, parenting, etc. This pattern repeats, resulting in a site that can cater to almost any political ideology, age, gender, and hobby."