Up-vote all you want, but the Internet isn’t a democracy

Reddit -- one of the most powerful determinants of Web news and trends -- has long billed itself as a wholly crowd-powered enterprise, subject only to the will of its unpredictable masses. But the software engineer Todd Schneider published a surprising discovery: The articles that “chart” on Reddit’s front page don’t do so on merit, alone.

Instead, Reddit employs a kind of algorithmic quota system that moderates which content reaches the masses. “I had always thought that Reddit’s front pages operated as some kind of direct democracy,” Schneider wrote. “I was surprised to learn that’s not actually the case.” It’s not, Reddit admin Chad Birch confirmed on the site itself. Far from relying on raw user votes, the site actually uses a multipart normalization algorithm to get a good mix of content on the front page. As a consequence, of course, a great deal of content that’s very popular with the community never makes it to the front page, at all.