Reddit is currently experimenting with a dedicated news tab, now live for select users of its iOS app. The said tab has now been rolled out into the beta stage, which means it might be given an official release date sooner rather than later.
Reddit initially shipped an alpha version of the news tab to iOS users this past May. At the time, the website explained it wanted to dedicate an area just for news items on the site to make browsing through them easier for users, especially those who are subscribed to a lot of subreddits.
How Reddit Gathers News
How does Reddit determine what's newsworthy? Well, it explains that it first figured out which subreddits were most engaged with news, as TechCrunch reports. To do this, it looked at the most-clicked posts by domain in the subreddits. Then it came up with a list of 1,000 domains from media publishers centered on news. It then used this list to find out which subreddits are the most news-heavy and news-engaged.
Of course, apart from being engaged with news, there are a bunch of other rules subreddits should follow before being eligible. For starters, they must be heavily moderated. They must also abide by the its rules and policies. Most important of all, the subreddit has to compel users that the title of their news posts must reflect the actual title of the article it links to, presumably to avoid clickbait-heavy posts that show up on Reddit quite frequently.
The news tab is quite diverse. It's a smattering of topics ranging from business, technology, sports, science, entertainment, gaming, and more — popular topics on Reddit as a whole. Majority of the content are linked posts, but in some cases, such as sports news, video is allowed.
Users are given the option to filter what they want to see in the news tab, and they can even add more topics beyond those mentioned above.
The purpose of the news tab, it should be noted, isn't to highlight the fact that Reddit is often one of the first sites to deliver breaking news. Instead, it serves as a convenient aggregate of the work done by various legitimate news publications. It should not be taken as an actual media publisher but instead a distributor or streamer of news, with an active comments section as a bonus. That's something not always present in news sites, the bulk of which have turned off discussions entirely. Reddit is also a great way of centralizing opinions on a particular topic. Sure, interactions happen on Facebook or Twitter, but they lack Reddit's upvote system, which could prove useful in some scenarios, such as community-based fact-checking.
Reddit News Tab Feedback
Just note that the product is still in beta, and a lot of things could change down the line. Early feedback seems to be encouraging for the most part, although some already claim it's a bad idea.
"There are already a variety of news based subreddits, so this just feels like another 'Facebook' style change that nobody asked for. Reddit should be focused on improving what makes it unique, not copying other big sites," one user said.
What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below!
