You can find the answer to almost anything online, and, for many, their first stop is on Reddit.
Dubbed the “front page of the internet,” it shouldn’t be surprising to learn just how mega-popular Reddit is. It’s used by millions of people on a weekly basis, as they flood to the site to enjoy its broadly varied and, in some cases, extremely niche offerings. News that many of the site’s subreddits are going dark, as a form of protest against impending platform changes, has the aggregation site’s many, many corners under a microscope, as hordes of web users examine just what we’d be losing if Reddit doesn’t rethink those API changes.
Reddit’s many, many communities
Some of the most talked-about trends on the web start and end on Reddit, but there’s a chunk of internet users that have likely never visited the site. They have, however, without fail stumbled across at least one or two curiosities that began on the platform, from reposted “am I the asshole” queries to informative posts, videos, and so very much more.
The site’s most-visited subs tend to be its most broadly palatable, but Reddit offers up communities for literally anyone. I even subscribe to a sub that’s specifically dedicated to hating on a character in a sci-fi series. Seriously, go check out r/fucklysander if you don’t believe me. Oh wait, you can’t — at least, not in mid-June of 2023, because that sub, like so many others, is currently dark.
In a normal day, when thousands upon thousands of subreddits aren’t closed down in protest, the site offers up hundreds of thousands of various communities for the knitting fanatics, die-hard fantasy fans, and drama hounds among us. You can vent about your toxic mother-in-law, ask questions of educated historians, and browse world news all from the same, convenient — and only sometimes toxic — app.
When they’re all functioning normally, Reddit boasts nearly 140,000 active subreddits at any given time. That’s among more than 1 million communities in total, and discludes subs that have fallen out of use over the years. Think subs dedicated to specific shows — there’s not much chatter about Heroes anymore — or to random, pop culture moments we’ve left in the past. Active subreddits are used on a relatively frequent basis by a reasonable number of users, though that “reasonable” number can vary widely.
So there you go. Tens of thousands of subreddits exist out there on the web, offering up a niche space for users to discuss their varied, specialized interests at their leisure. Due to the impending API changes, at least 6,000 or so of those subs are currently dark, with no specified date at which they’ll be back up and running. These are some of the site’s biggest communities, but even without them, Reddit has more than enough to go around.