Flipping Reddit

If Elon Musk didn’t have other priorities at the moment, he might want to consider adding Reddit to his free speech portfolio. Such a feat would take away one of the largest and most powerful social media platforms the Left uses to spread propaganda and organize at the local, state, and national levels. This would give conservatives a new, massive platform to drive politics and change culture, especially among younger Americans.

Conservatives missed the opportunity to dominate on Tumblr, which counts Gen Z and Millennials as a substantial portion of its active users—to the tune of 135 million per month. Given TikTok’s relationship with its Beijing-based ownership, conservatives have largely avoided the app in good conscience. But the opportunity with Reddit is different.

The takeover window emerged after March 21, 2024, when Reddit launched an initial public offering, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RDDT.” Since the IPO, the stock has risen as high as $230 per share, but since February, it’s dropped to half that.

Analysts blame the decline on fewer platform users and uncertain growth prospects. The consensus is that Reddit simply isn’t yet generating the desired returns. This presents a major opening for conservatives.

Founded in 2005, Reddit boasts roughly 1.1 billion active users per month, and over 97 million daily users. It’s the third most visited website in the U.S., only behind Google and YouTube—and ahead of Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, ChatGPT, and X.

According to HubSpot, well more than half of Reddit users are men. Roughly 43% of its users are Millennials; another 2% are from Gen Z. Like Tumblr, these demographics make up roughly 70% of all site users.

Users like Reddit’s capacity for building communities, as well as getting a certain degree of anonymity. They like Reddit’s niche communities of “subreddits,” or “subs,” which are specific forums dedicated to anything you can think of, from politics and religion to fans of Taylor Swift or crypto. Reddit hosts roughly 3.4 million subreddits, and 138,000 are considered “active.”

If conservatives could establish a foothold in Reddit at scale, they could bring an element of common sense that would seep into the culture through those active subreddits.

The challenge for conservatives is that Reddit is notoriously left-leaning. Before going public, Reddit appeared to be just fine with that. But as pressures mount for the company to meet analyst expectations and generate earnings, the company’s criteria for success are likely to fall more in line with other publicly traded social media companies—attracting eyeballs, clicks, and shares; extending the time users spend on the site; and generating revenue.

Ideology seems to drive the site’s sometimes aggressive content moderation. Any conservative who’s made a serious attempt to use Reddit has likely run up against site rules, separate subreddit rules, and moderators who often undermine anything and everything conservative.

Upon closer scrutiny, however, it’s impossible to ignore the raw power of a platform like Reddit has to influence and control the culture. Users are younger and more impressionable, and they like the format.

The conservative formula for success is simple: they need to join the site en masse and create the same sort of disruption they did on Twitter when Elon Musk bought it. Their sheer numbers will overwhelm the platform and will get the attention of Reddit’s management and investors.

Conservatives need to start subreddits and build communities, which is something they tend to enjoy and are quite good at. They need to be moderators, content creators, and frequent commenters. They need to dominate and transform the existing framework at Reddit that right now tends to shut out conservative voices.

As this pattern takes hold, a group of conservative potential investors should buy enough stock to warrant board representation and have a greater say in the management of the company. Their objective should be the same one that Elon Musk stated when he bought Twitter: free speech for all.

If conservatives are able to flip Reddit from a deep blue haven for leftist propaganda into another forum for free speech, one where they can meet younger demographics where they live, the ripple effects will be felt deep in American culture, going well beyond the current Trump term in the White House.

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