Reddit’s Model for a Better Internet | Steve Huffman | TED — Transcript

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1. 0:04So I’m Steve Huffman, and today I want to start with a question:
2. 0:09Are humans going extinct on the internet?
3. 0:12I’ll cut to the chase: my answer is no.
4. 0:14But the internet is becoming more automated
5. 0:18and more optimized for attention,
6. 0:21and people feel more alone.
7. 0:24And the purpose of the internet was to connect people.
8. 0:28And the internet has indeed connected billions of people.
9. 0:31But being connected and the feeling of connection
10. 0:36are two different things.
11. 0:39And so if we want to maintain our humanity on the internet,
12. 0:42we are going to have to build it intentionally.
13. 0:45And I want to introduce an idea which is the stage versus the city.
14. 0:50But first, a little bit of context.
15. 0:52So a few of us started Reddit in 2005 --
16. 0:5520 years ago.
17. 0:57We were kids -- I was 21.
18. 0:59We didn't have a plan for the future of the internet,
19. 1:01we didn't have a plan for ourselves.
20. 1:03The idea was very simple:
21. 1:04we wanted a place where people could share links from around the web
22. 1:08and talk about them.
23. 1:09And submit links and talk about them they did.
24. 1:12In fact, one of the first inside jokes on Reddit was
25. 1:15"I didn't read the article, but --"
26. 1:18And then, you know, a thousand words about the article they didn't read.
27. 1:22(Laughter)
28. 1:24But from these conversations emerged communities.
29. 1:26First one, then a couple, then a dozen,
30. 1:29then thousands and hundreds of thousands.
31. 1:31The communities sometimes are interesting, helpful, funny, weird,
32. 1:37sometimes all of these things.
33. 1:39I left in 2009,
34. 1:40I was gone for five years,
35. 1:42and when I came back,
36. 1:44the platform was in a different place, it was at a low point.
37. 1:47Among many reasons,
38. 1:49the most important was there were no policies.
39. 1:51There was no guardrails about what behavior was acceptable or not.
40. 1:56And so while communities are created naturally,
41. 1:59they emerge naturally when people are together,
42. 2:02a platform, a system where many communities can coexist
43. 2:06in a healthy and sustainable way and thrive --
44. 2:10that has to happen on purpose.
45. 2:13And that's what we've been working on.
46. 2:16A few years ago,
47. 2:17the US Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic.
48. 2:2273 percent of people surveyed
49. 2:24said technology contributes to that loneliness,
50. 2:27which is not great if you run an internet technology company.
51. 2:31But at the same time,
52. 2:32people are spending more and more time at in-person events.
53. 2:37So in the most chronically online era,
54. 2:39people are seeking out in-person connection.
55. 2:43So the question isn’t, do people want connection?
56. 2:46The question is, how do we deliver it
57. 2:48and how do we deliver it on the internet intentionally?
58. 2:51So what would a more human internet look like?
59. 2:55Well let’s set a little context here.
60. 2:59If you were born after the year 2000,
61. 3:02you have never experienced the internet without social media.
62. 3:06Social media and the internet are different things.
63. 3:09Social media is a distinct format
64. 3:12that is unnatural,
65. 3:14and it causes people to have to perform.
66. 3:17Social media, the analogy I use is the stage.
67. 3:21There's a spotlight, there's an audience,
68. 3:23there's a performer,
69. 3:25there's someone or something trying to get your attention.
70. 3:29And so this environment creates performers.
71. 3:33Imagine going to a wedding with an open bar and an open mic
72. 3:36and everybody taking turns vying for attention.
73. 3:39It's kind of annoying.
74. 3:41(Laughter)
75. 3:43As is social media.
76. 3:45(Laughter)
77. 3:46The currency of social media is engagement.
78. 3:50It doesn't matter if it's positive or negative,
79. 3:53just that somebody's got your attention.
80. 3:56And so this causes
81. 3:57... people to say things they don’t even believe
82. 4:00to get that attention.
83. 4:02And they very rarely say things they actually believe.
84. 4:05So it's fitting that the Oxford word of the year last year
85. 4:08was “rage bait.”
86. 4:10And now with AI,
87. 4:11you can take the human out of the loop entirely
88. 4:14and create this content without people at all.
89. 4:17So we sacrificed our humanity by saying things we don't believe,
90. 4:20and then sacrificed it again by adding AI into the mix.
91. 4:24Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2025 was “slop.”
92. 4:27And so we sacrificed our humanity multiple times.
93. 4:32Let me provide to you another perspective, another metaphor,
94. 4:35which is the city.
95. 4:37Cities are an inseparable concept from humanity.
96. 4:42What is a city?
97. 4:43A city is a place where people live,
98. 4:46they work, they play,
99. 4:47they go shopping, they eat.
100. 4:49And cities naturally subdivide into neighborhoods.
101. 4:52And those neighborhoods have distinct cultures and vibes.
102. 4:57This is the model we use for Reddit.
103. 5:00On Reddit,
104. 5:01you can support, you can share a few laughs,
105. 5:04you can learn about things.
106. 5:06There’s coffee shops, there’s sports bars,
107. 5:08there’s a few weird basements.
108. 5:11But the communities on Reddit are like the neighborhoods.
109. 5:13They're naturally forming
110. 5:15and they have their distinct cultures and values and vibes.
111. 5:18And we think this model is a better model for the internet.
112. 5:25The only city I know where everybody wants to be famous is LA.
113. 5:29(Laughter)
114. 5:30In general, the stage creates celebrities.
115. 5:34The city creates citizens.
116. 5:36The stage concentrates attention.
117. 5:40In the city, it's distributed.
118. 5:42On the stage, people are competing for the spotlight.
119. 5:46In the city, people are just with one another,
120. 5:49talking, hanging out, sharing a few laughs.
121. 5:52On the stage, people are working.
122. 5:55Literally on social media,
123. 5:57people are working to become rich and famous.
124. 6:00You can't become rich and famous on Reddit.
125. 6:02I'm sorry.
126. 6:05The stage uses likes and algorithms to decide what to put in front of you.
127. 6:11On Reddit, we use the upvote and the downvote.
128. 6:14The upvote you understand -- the downvote is very important.
129. 6:17This is where communities enforce their values, define their culture,
130. 6:20enforce the unwritten rules.
131. 6:24Communities have values.
132. 6:25Stages do not.
133. 6:27I want to walk you through some of these neighborhoods
134. 6:30or communities on Reddit.
135. 6:31One of them we call “Mom for a Minute.”
136. 6:33These are all real examples, by the way.
137. 6:35“Mom for a Minute” is a place where you can go
138. 6:39if you need a mom for a minute,
139. 6:41or you want to be a mom for a minute,
140. 6:43if you need a little support or a hug or maybe some honest feedback.
141. 6:48This example, somebody took a break,
142. 6:50went back to school after five years and got into their dream med school
143. 6:53and posted that, “Hey Mom, I got into my dream med school today.”
144. 6:56And the reply, there was many of them, was
145. 6:59“That is so awesome, you did it!
146. 7:00Congratulations.
147. 7:01And don't forget to take a little time for yourself."
148. 7:04I'd invite you all to be, you know, a mom for a minute if it suits you.
149. 7:09Another community is called “Bald.”
150. 7:12(Cheers)
151. 7:13(Laughter)
152. 7:14Community is present with us today.
153. 7:16(Laughter)
154. 7:17Bald is for people who are thinking about shaving their head
155. 7:22and finally committing to being bald.
156. 7:24It's a support community.
157. 7:25It's a community about self-esteem and identity.
158. 7:28This guy posted here, "My mom is balding because of chemo,
159. 7:31so I thought I'd join her."
160. 7:33You can imagine the responses here, how supportive people were.
161. 7:36Those responses made it back to the mom who was overjoyed and said,
162. 7:39"This is probably the most supportive community on Reddit."
163. 7:43I would also invite you all to be bald for a minute.
164. 7:46(Laughter)
165. 7:47Finally, another example:
166. 7:49“Am I the asshole?”
167. 7:50(Laughter)
168. 7:52Don't answer that.
169. 7:54“Am I the asshole?” is one of the largest communities on Reddit.
170. 7:57100 million people visited this last year alone.
171. 8:00It's where people pose moral questions, and they're not all high stakes.
172. 8:04For example, “Would I be an asshole if I uninvited my mother-in-law
173. 8:08to my baby shower?"
174. 8:10The context here in the small print is “She’s kind of mean to me.
175. 8:14She makes these snarky jokes.”
176. 8:16Some people asked for more information,
177. 8:18a few people said "You're not the asshole,"
178. 8:20but the overwhelming consensus was "You are the asshole."
179. 8:23The specific feedback was:
180. 8:24"This is a nuclear-level response to a small issue."
181. 8:27(Laughter)
182. 8:30Or "You have a husband problem, not a mother-in-law problem."
183. 8:33(Laughter)
184. 8:35OK, so we posed the same prompt to an AI chatbot
185. 8:39and it said, "You are not the asshole.
186. 8:41You are brave.
187. 8:43That's not petty --
188. 8:46that's protective."
189. 8:47(Laughter)
190. 8:49So OK, no judgment here,
191. 8:52but what do we get in a world where you strip out humanity
192. 8:58and the moral advice is constantly gassing people up
193. 9:01and affirming them?
194. 9:02On Reddit, you get tough love,
195. 9:05but that is what a community is and that's where the values come from.
196. 9:09And we believe this is essential.
197. 9:11We've been doing this 20 years, we've seen a few things.
198. 9:14[Here are] some of our observations.
199. 9:16The first is we get to see how people behave
200. 9:21when nobody's watching.
201. 9:23Reddit is public, but it feels private.
202. 9:26And what we see is that people are neighborly,
203. 9:29the way they are in a city.
204. 9:31We see that people aren't just good,
205. 9:35they're actually overwhelmingly good.
206. 9:38When you strip away all the incentives of social media,
207. 9:41we see that people just want to be helpful and interesting and funny,
208. 9:45which is a very different perspective than I think one might get
209. 9:48if their view of humanity is through the lens of social media.
210. 9:53We see that self-governance works amazingly well.
211. 9:57What we say at Reddit is the only thing that scales with people is people.
212. 10:00So all of our communities, they write their own rules on Reddit.
213. 10:04Far and away, the most common rule within Reddit communities
214. 10:07is some form of "be civil."
215. 10:10AI doesn't have values.
216. 10:13Well, actually it does,
217. 10:14but those values are programmed in.
218. 10:17And I think it's worth considering who did the programming.
219. 10:20(Applause)
220. 10:24And finally, one of the biggest misconceptions,
221. 10:27Reddit is mostly anonymous.
222. 10:28People think, mostly anonymous, that must lead to bad behavior.
223. 10:32No.
224. 10:33The context and the incentives lead to good or bad behavior.
225. 10:36People being anonymous actually is safety.
226. 10:39It gives people the freedom to be themselves
227. 10:41and say what they really think.
228. 10:43What we've learned about cities is that cities are organic organisms.
229. 10:48They're living organisms created by their citizens.
230. 10:50Everything interesting about the city that we're in
231. 10:53was created by the people who live here,
232. 10:55as is everything interesting on Reddit was created by its users.
233. 10:59We didn't design it, it emerged.
234. 11:02That's what you get when you let people be people.
235. 11:05Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not actually anti-AI.
236. 11:09It is very powerful and very practical.
237. 11:13Sometimes you just need an answer.
238. 11:16You can go to an AI search and ask,
239. 11:19what's the best way to cook rice and get an answer.
240. 11:21You can go to Reddit and get 100 answers,
241. 11:24but sometimes you just need one and that's fine.
242. 11:26(Laughter)
243. 11:27But the more automated and summarized
244. 11:31and sanitized and manicured that the rest of the internet becomes,
245. 11:35the more we need places for people to be people,
246. 11:39for people to be humans.
247. 11:42We need places, fewer stages and more cities.
248. 11:46Places where,
249. 11:48instead of performing,
250. 11:50you can participate.
251. 11:52Where the incentive isn't to go viral,
252. 11:54the incentive is to be helpful.
253. 11:55So if we want to keep our humanity in the age of AI,
254. 11:59we need to build places for people to be humans and let them do it.
255. 12:03Thank you.
256. 12:04(Applause)
257. 12:08Bilawal Sidhu: Hi, this is Bilawal, the tech curator for TED 2026.
258. 12:11That was a fun one, wasn't it?
259. 12:12Like, I go on social media these days,
260. 12:14and I have no idea if some of these accounts are even real or fake.
261. 12:17And despite the fact that we've got AI chatbots
262. 12:20that seem increasingly realistic,
263. 12:21there's something that draws us to these humanistic communities
264. 12:24where there's an actual person on the other end giving you advice.
265. 12:28This is such an important conversation to be having right now,
266. 12:31not just about what it means to be human,
267. 12:33but how we set the right incentive structures in place
268. 12:36so that we create a social media that reflects our need
269. 12:39for human connection.
270. 12:40Advice that you get from an AI could be amazing,
271. 12:43but the fact that a human being that has had a lived experience
272. 12:46gives it to you just makes it far more profound and relevant.
273. 12:50I can't imagine a better time for this talk, as we've got AI agents,
274. 12:53social media all competing for our attention.
275. 12:56Along comes Steve, painting a picture for what it would be like
276. 12:59to forge a real community and human connection on the internet.
277. 13:03I hope you enjoyed it.