(Otherwise I would appear biased, and could alienate a general audience.) Sometimes I had to make the title interesting, but I would never distort the story or be misleading. “I would change the title to reflect the gist of the article, but I would never editorialize it.

“I focused on building a reputation for quality links with a style of my own: I avoided pics, jokes, and comics if at all possible I focused on well-written articles from reputable sources,” maxwellhill wrote on Gizmodo a few years back. With top posts in each of these three subreddits appearing on Reddit’s front page-and as the first subreddits each new Reddit user was subscribed to when they signed up-it was important for the site to look busy. This was crucial for Reddit, whose cofounders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman were eager to have people contribute to their link-sharing website.

One of the first moderators of default subreddits r/politics, r/technology, and r/worldnews, maxwellhill joined Reddit eight years ago, and immediately made sure each forum featured links to hundreds of news stories a month. Maxwellhill, one of Reddit’s first and most important users, has now become the site’s own worst enemy.