 Our next guest, you may not know him as a human being, but you certainly know his website where you find all of your favorite memes and animated cat gifs. Please welcome one of the founders of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian. Yes, awesome. Watch your step. You're very careful. And watch your step over there. Oh, look, you brought props. I like anybody who brings props. Carrot Top taught me well. Did you say Carrot Top taught you well? Yeah, he's a prop comic. Please leave. And the record for shortest interview ever. Yeah. Now, first off, can I ask you anything? Yes, you can ask me anything. It's a Reddit joke. Come on, guys. Step it up. There were only three Redditors in the audience. Yeah, seriously, very sad. So let's talk a little about, I want to talk about the creation, the ideation, the birth of Reddit. You co-founded it in 2005. Who are your partners? Steve Huffman. Just Steve? Yeah, me and Steve got together. We got together in an apartment about a month after we graduated from UVA and got started trying to create the front page of the internet. A lot of fortunate things came together and here we are today. Here you are. Could you imagine, could you have ever thought you'd be sitting talking to me? Not in a million years. What an incredible climb. What a success story. My big concern is I know it's only downhill from here. It really is. Everything will seem boring and horrible after this because I'm going to ruin it for you. So what was your thought when you were building Reddit? What did you want to do? In all frankness, Steve and I were friends since the first day of college when he thought I was a girl because of my name on the door. You do have a lady's name. You're aware of that, right? I do. I was named after a Nicaraguan boxer named Alexis Arguello, who was a dude, but at a very early age realized I needed to embrace my effeminate name. So yes, I am Alexis. And you're feminine today. Oh, every day. But so most importantly, Steve and I really just wanted to perpetuate our college life. We really loved being able to eat pizza, drink beer, and work on fun projects. And we thought, let's try to do this by starting a company. We didn't set out to do a lot of the things that Reddit has done in the way of philanthropic work or political work. I'd be lying if I said we did. We just wanted to create a place where we could find what was new and interesting online. That's really interesting. You just wanted a place to find hilarious stuff and collect it. And informative as well. Oh, come on. Cats can be instructional. That's true. They can. They can. And why do you think it's become, you know, you call it the front page of the internet. Why do you think it has actually really become the front page of the internet? I mean, it has turned into something that is, I mean, based on what you're telling me, maybe you guys didn't even predict. But it has turned into something really big and special. How did that happen? Black magic. We made deals. That's good. Deals with same. Very nefarious individuals. Well, you know what? When we started Red in 2005, social media wasn't even a phrase. You know, Facebook was still sort of relegated to colleges and many of the things we can't live without today didn't exist. And I think we just hit, oh goodness. Don't carry on. Are you okay? I would obviously need a drink, but it's alcoholic. So is mine. Oh, dude. Is alcohol supposed to go into the lung? Is that right? Not a document. Okay. We can edit this, right? We can go ahead and edit this. It will be seamless. Just carry on as long as it happened. I was busy trying to remember all my Heimlich training. Yes, here. Thanks for nothing. I could have died. I could have freaking died. You just sat there. I was ready to jump in action. Sorry. So I was asking how it became... Oh yes. What it was. I think a lot of it was timing. And here's the thing. Not to take anything, but Steve did a brilliant job actually building Reddit. By the way, we're open source. So take a look at his work. The work that went into it, there was a ton of it. But at the end of the day, we had a lot of really great timing. And we came about at a time when people were still starting... They were just now starting to realize that user generated content was a thing of value. And it turned out there were a lot of people interested in submitting links and voting on them and having discussions on the internet. Far more than we'd ever experienced. And we caught things at the right time. And I think the overarching ethos, the spirit of Reddit that Steve and I knew we had to continue was that the two of us sitting in an apartment were never gonna be able to find the best stuff on the internet. We tried for the first couple of weeks because we were submitting things ourselves. And there was no way we'd be able to find it all. So we needed to be good to our users. Because if our users weren't excited about submitting to Reddit and providing good content, they'd never do it. And we wouldn't have a site that was worth anything. So being good to those users, I think, is what helped Reddit continue to grow for all these years. And you've had a lot of competition. You've had competition out there. At one point, Digg kind of seemed to occupy the space that you guys occupy. And maybe actually, when I think about Digg, it didn't seem to go as deep. And maybe that's just the way our culture is moving. But Reddit seems to go, reach deeper into both the dark heart of the internet and outwardly to things like policy. But Digg was at one point very much on top. And they made some pretty substantial changes. I feel like you guys saw kind of a flood of users who were looking for refuge. What did you learn from that? What did you see there? And what were your takeaways from it? We saw a significant bump after Digg version 4. It wasn't world changing. Reddit has always steadily grown. And I think what it did was it really reinforced this belief we had that we didn't need to care about our competition. We need to build the best site we could for our users. And like I said, do right by them. And the real fatal flaw to Digg 4 was taking away user submission, was taking the very last bit of that democratic platform away from the people who, like I said, added all the value. And as we moved closer towards giving users more power, I feel like they moved further away until it eventually undid them. Well part of their thing was they felt like some users had too much power. And what do you do to combat? I mean, how are you trying to fight super users? There is a karma system on Reddit. And I hope many of you work hard to get lots of Reddit karma. But it really means nothing. It doesn't bias your votes. Every Redditor, all Redditors are equal. No Redditors are more equal than others. That was something in our FAQ from day zero. And we wanted to make sure that we had a system where if you wanted to come on for the very first time, and it happens every day on Reddit, submit a post, say, I'm a blank, ask me anything, you could be on the front page that evening and the next morning on the Today Show. And that literally actually happens now. Because we can let anyone who doesn't have any clout on the internet, but who's got a good story or has found some good content, get the fame, internet fame that he or she's idea deserves. That's actually, this is actually, it's interpolated my next question. So you recently banned some publications. A lot of news stories, you banned The Atlantic, some other guys, for abusing Reddit. And you know, we run a publication, The Verge. We are occasionally on Reddit, which is wonderful. And I wanted to get some tips from you, I feel like if there's going to be a source on how not to abuse Reddit as a publication, that you're the guy to ask. So let me just, a couple of questions here. How many accounts is normal for one person to have? Would you say, I'm going to give you a few ranges. Between 20 and 40? Between 40 and 60? Where do you feel is the comfort zone for one individual to have accounts? This is going to sound crazy, but one. I will say, I'll add in a hashtag there. 100? And you hit the nail on the head. It's things like this that we pay, have always paid very close attention to. It's kind of an arms race. We're always trying to keep one step ahead of the cheaters. But that's a really obvious way to be bad on Reddit, is to create lots of shill accounts and upvote your content. You know, I'll certainly agree that everyone needs a fake account so that they can say the things they may not be comfortable saying. The racist, really racist stuff. No, no, I'd hope not. Really nasty sex stuff. I was thinking more like the ask me anythings, where you know, candor is sort of required in being honest. But the fascinating thing is we've always tried really hard to keep that kind of cheating down and you know, we had publications that disregarded it. And I think partly because our predecessors actually sort of encouraged it, we've had to sort of undo that mess. Okay, when using multiple accounts, IP spoofing, yes or no? No, no, don't try that. Don't do that? No. And in general, my final question in this extremely serious line of questioning, how many Verge links should I be submitting on a daily basis? Again, I'll give you a range. 20 to 40, 40 to 60 or unlimited because it's all really great stuff. I think in the Verges case it should be that. Oh really? No, God no, please don't. You heard it here first. Unlimited submissions of Verge content. In a nutshell, the best secret that I tell publishers is, and I think people often forget this when they go on the internet, is just act like you would in real life. Don't act like a jerk. Don't act like you're self-promoting your own content. Don't do that because that wouldn't fly in real life and it doesn't fly on the internet. So just make good stuff. We get worried, I mean honestly like Reddit, I mean look, we're a new site, right? So we're growing and when we see something on the front page of Reddit, like the traffic is crazy. And it's not just that it's new traffic. I'll just get a little serious with you for a second even though I was clearly joking. I thought this was a really serious interview. It is very serious. But it's not just that it's traffic, it's that it's a lot of new traffic. A lot of people who've never heard of the Verge before. And so we're actually like really, I don't want to screw it up. There are times when we're like, hey, our stuff has got a bunch of votes. Go check it out. Vote it up if you're on Reddit. And I don't want to be the kind of guy who abuses what you guys are doing because I think what you're doing is really special and really important. And I mean, yes, I'm going to continue to use multiple accounts and spoof their IPs, but I'm going to do it in a way that is almost undetectable. And that's the important thing. So okay, so if you guys are the front page of the internet, and by the way, you have a lot in common with 4chan. If you're the front page, are they like the back door of the internet? Wow. I can't top that. I mean, how do you, because I feel like there's all of this, you know, there's almost a, you feel like it could go 4chan at any moment. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, but it would be a little bit more chaotic than what you have going on now. I mean, you know, the moderation system that's in place, the pseudo anonymity. So unlike 4chan, your Redders have identities. They're anonymous. You have a username. It could be Alexis Ohanian or it could be FluffyBunny26, but you still have an identity. That's me. That was, yeah, spoiler. And so I think that has helped preserve it. And what's been really fascinating is, you know, Reddit is a platform, like Twitter, like Tumblr, like all these others we use. And communities form and use this platform to share links about everything from, I subscribe to Redskins Reddit because I happen to be a Die Hard Skins fan and a masochist. And that community has its own culture. It has its own ethos. It submits a certain type of links, has its own inside jokes. And that's how they choose to use the platform. And it's those moderation tools that I think encourage that great behavior that we see bubbling up into great things like the philanthropy and the political work. I mean, are you doing this on purpose? You're segueing perfectly into my next question. I am psychic. So you are very active. I mean, you guys were very outspoken on SOPA. You are referred to as the mayor of the internet. It was a landslide election. No, but you guys laugh, but he had a chief of staff here earlier backstage. But how do you take the kind of rage and anger and disillusionment that you see on Reddit, which I feel, and I think a lot of us do, when you're watching these stupid pieces of legislation getting pushed and people kind of who don't get the internet trying to legislate the internet, how do you take that rage and the stuff that bubbles up to the front page and turn it into something that creates real action? How do you go from Reddit to activism? You know, I am not entirely sure. We have- But you're the mayor. Sorry. And it took a lot of check-ins, a ton of check-ins to get that mayorship. All over the place. On the internet. I don't know. I think if you see any of the stuff that starts out as a Reddit post and ends it with real world action, again, whether it's activism or philanthropy, there's just stuff that happens. It's some person who starts with a random idea and it starts snowballing. And what the internet does such a great job of is sort of giving us all ways to help. I use the metaphor to talk a little while back about everyone getting the chance to be their own Batman or Batwoman. We know there are lots of things screwed up that we want to try and fix. We want to create vigilantes who take to the streets at night to deal violently with criminals. Only if they're wearing this mask. Which I brought you. What is this? You brought this mask. Because I want to carry this metaphor into the real world. Because we all have our little figurative Gothams. Can we get it? Yes. And this is not promotion for the film, although I highly recommend you all see it. Have you seen it? No. Really? Do you guys get access? No, we don't get access. You think the entertainment industry does not do me any favors. There goes my hair. This is really not comfortable, by the way. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's supposed to be Batman. Does Batman have bad sight? Is that what's going on? He's like, I think you're the Joker. Stop committing crimes. With a voice. There you go. That is lovely. That is nice. That is... That I'll be using in the bedroom later tonight. As long as you... To protect the people in the bedroom, obviously. Josh Dupolsky. But that's... What's going on? There is this really empowering thing. It just suddenly became a role play. It really is getting nasty in here. That's the really empowering thing is that you can be sitting there... Just yesterday we saw this video of this woman on a bus up in Queens, New York being harassed by a bunch of students. And 24 hours later after that story, that video, front page is on Reddit. She has literally $200,000 donated to her from people all over the world who simply said, this is wrong. I want to do something about it. Oh, I got to get harassed. That is a lucrative move for me. Make sure it's videotaped. Yeah. No, on video, obviously. Of course. Alexis, I wish we had more time. There's so much more to talk about. Well, you know what? I was a little bummed I didn't get to sit down with LeVar. But you know what? You can't disappoint a picture. And maybe it's better that I actually get to meet him. That's very meme-y of you to say. Alexis, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. You got to come back. You got to come back. That was awesome. This is awesome. Oh, and I brought you a bra. We didn't get to... What is this? This is a bra. I'm sorry. We didn't even get to this. This is a... I'm a book publisher. This company I started... What? It's like a Newman's Zone for nerds called Breadpig. Our goal, our specified aim is to make the world suck less. Can we get this on camera? Can we read this on camera? Is this... I'll give you $10 to show this. This is Saturday morning breakfast cereal. So Zach Wiener wrote this. It's a web comic, one of the most popular on the internet. We published the book for him. He gets a majority of the profits. It's published under a Creative Commons license. And our profits all get donated to DonorsChoose.org, specifically to classroom projects. And math and science. Now, that's not totally benevolent. You know why? Because little kids who don't learn about math and science don't grow up into being the geeks who will read this book. So if we can make more geeks, we'll sell more books. It's just a long-term... I fully support that. Yeah. Go buy this book. So thank you. Go buy it right now. Thank you again. Thank you again. Thank you again.