Hello, everyone, and thanks once again for reading Fast Company’s Plugged In.
For years, some of the world’s most productive web searches have had something in common: They begin at Google and end at Reddit.
In some cases, that’s because the person doing the searching has added “reddit” to their query, deliberately pushing material from the internet’s biggest, most indispensable hub of conversations to the top of Google results. But even if you haven’t expressed an explicit preference for Reddit links, Google often emphasizes them. They can feel like islands of quality information floating in a river of links to sites that are spammy or just not very good.
Now Reddit sees an opportunity to become, in CEO Steve Huffman’s words during its most recent quarterly investor call, “a true search destination” unto itself. That aspiration is reflected in Reddit Answers, an AI-infused information retrieval feature that debuted last December. Huffman says the company plans to merge the tool with Reddit’s existing search and redesign its homepage around them.
If Reddit can use its new search interface to answer questions quickly and accurately on its own, it might make googling less of a reflexive habit. It would also position the site’s human expertise even more clearly as an alternative to ChatGPT and other bots that dispense eerily human-sounding advice but often behave like broken robots.
In its current form, Reddit Answers is just a beta that reflects only part of this bigger vision. It lets you seek information by entering search-like queries. Then it uses AI to weave together material from multiple Reddit discussions into one coherent, bullet-pointed response that quotes individual Redditors and links back to their original posts. The sample queries it suggests—from “best coffee maker” to “highest salary part time jobs” to “tips for flying with a baby for the first time”—convey Reddit’s remarkable breadth of topics.
Interface-wise, Reddit Answers feels familiar—something of a hybrid of Google in its classic form and a generative-AI chatbot. And yet it couldn’t exist without the Reddit community’s knowledge and opinion, which provide all its value. Lest others build anything similar without permission, the company has grown increasingly protective of its brain trust: It’s signed licensing deals with Google and OpenAI and has been blocking others from trawling its pages—even the eminently laudable Internet Archive.
Like the responses from AI bots, Reddit Answers’ replies can feel more like data dumps than anything succinct and definitive: For “best coffee maker,” it comes up with 10 models that at least one Reddit user has owned and liked—useful data points, but not a substitute for further research. But in many cases, a somewhat scattershot summary of Reddit chatter may be more reliable than a pure-AI answer that could be incomplete or even hallucinatory.
For example, when I asked ChatGPT for advice on bicycle locks, its advice read well but didn’t mention the handful of models that are tough enough to resist sustained attack by a thief equipped with an axle grinder—a reminder that AI merely simulates expertise rather than achieving it. Reddit Answers ‘ bike-lock response was just as easy to digest, and far more authoritative.
When Reddit Answers doesn’t entirely address your question on its first try, the fact it’s Reddit gives it a critical advantage. Its humanity is all on the surface. You can click through from Reddit Answers’ citations and continue the conversation with real people! You might even find yourself becoming part of a community, which is not something that happens with Google search or ChatGPT.
The current AI wave has led to widespread fascination with the “Dead Internet Theory”—the possibility that people are being squeezed out of online discourse by inauthentic, machine-generated slop. I worry about that, too. But at the moment, Reddit provides happy evidence that doubling down on humans can be a viable business.
The company, which went public in March 2024, beat analyst expectations for its most recent quarter, propelling its stock to record heights. In its most recent quarter, daily visitors averaged 110.4 million, an increase of 21% year-over-year. It managed to sell $465 million in advertising during the quarter while maintaining a surprisingly distraction-free reading experience.
I find Reddit’s apparent health encouraging—not because I care about its stock price, ad business, or traffic per se, but because the helpful humans it’s assembled are our single biggest bulwark against the Dead Internet Theory becoming undeniable, irreversible reality. If the company were to suddenly vanish, or even just begin a slow decline, it would be catastrophic. And if Huffman gets anywhere with his goal of making it more of a self-sustaining destination rather than a Google appendage, we’ll all benefit.
You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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