It may not surprise you to learn that Donald Trump has many supporters among the netizens of Reddit, the notable man-heavy online birthplace of such movements as Gamergate and the push to remove onetime company CEO Ellen Pao. And tonight on their own subpage, of /r/The_Donald, a virtual shrine to an orange godhead, they'll put questions to their would be leader himself. In an Ask Me Anything or "AMA" session, Donald will respond as he does best, or really as he does only: off the cuff and to very select questions.
As moderators write, however, there is concern about spamming and protests, so they've taken extra precautions. "For this AMA we have temporarily taken extra security measures to keep our community free from troublemakers," they write. "We built the wall 10 ft taller, you might say. Comments from brand new accounts are among those that will be removed by the automoderator. Accounts that are less than 30 days old AND that have less than 500 combined karma are ineligible and their comments will be automatically removed."
Donald is to go on at 7 p.m. EST — very soon — and he has already posted his first missive. "Hello The_Donald readers and the entire Reddit community," Trump writes, "This is going to be SO huge and I'm looking forward to answering your questions. I'm doing this in flight to visit the great people of Toledo, OH, so Internet connection might be spotty -- I promise you, I'll answer all the questions I can. I want to do BIG things for America and as your President, I WILL Make America Great Again!"
In an example of nice timing, Reddit's CEO just told Adage that they've got a brand new advertising plan and are themselves going to be SO huge in the future, a rival of Facebook's etc. etc., since they're ready to "grow up."
"Reddit users don't like being bullshitted," CEO and cofounder Steve Huffman bullshitted to Adage. "Reddit is a platform where you can call people out on it. And a lot of traditional advertising feels like we're being taken advantage of and nobody likes that. But when advertisers come with honest intentions we see a much higher level of engagement with the brand. We don't see hostility and we have valuable connections." Nah.
So far in the AMA, a pseudo celebrity has emerged to ask some questions: Milo Yiannopoulos, recently banned from Twitter, is apparently still active on Reddit and already fomenting about Hillary Clinton under his nom de guerre "yiannopoulos_m / Dangerous Faggot - MILO." His questions have been met with cries to "Get Milo to the top!" and "Milo for press secretary!"
