FIR #495: Reddit, AI, and the New Rules of Communication

Reddit, the #2 social media site in the US, has surpassed TikTok to become the #4 site in the UK. It has no algorithm that forces you to see what’s most likely to keep you on the site; it just lets users upvote what they think is most interesting, valuable, or relevant. Every topic under the sun has a subreddit. Several organizations, from Starbucks to Uber, have taken advantage of it. So why is it absent from most communicators’ list of social media platforms to pay attention to? Neville and Shel look at Reddit’s growing influence in this episode. Links from This Episode: Reddit overtakes TikTok in UK thanks to search algorithms and gen ZBrian Niccol said a Reddit thread of people interviewing for his company showed him that his ‘Back to Starbucks’ plan was workingPlaying Defense: How (and When) Big Brands Respond to Negativity on RedditWayfair uses Reddit Pro to help redditors get answers, and grow traffic as a resultUber puts Reddit Ads in the Driver’s Seat and cruises to significant liftsReddit category takeover contributes to 5X higher Ad Awareness for OREO x STAR WARS™ collaboration The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 26. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [e-mail]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz: Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 495 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson: I’m Neville Hobson and let’s start by saying we wish you a happy new 2026. We’re recording this in the first week of January, so it’s a new year. Last week the Guardian reported something that might surprise people who still think of Reddit as a noisy corner of the internet best avoided. In a deep analysis, the paper noted that Reddit has now overtaken TikTok to become the fourth most visited social media site in the UK, with three in five UK internet users encountering it regularly, according to Ofcom, the industry regulator. Among 18 to 24-year-olds—the Gen Z cohort—it’s one of the most visited organizations of any kind. And the UK is now Reddit’s second largest market globally, behind only the US. That growth hasn’t happened because Reddit suddenly reinvented itself; it’s happened because the wider internet has changed around it. Google’s search algorithms now prioritize what it calls “helpful content,” particularly discussion forums. Reddit threads increasingly surface high in search results, and they’re also being cited heavily in AI-generated summaries. Reddit has licensing deals with both Google and OpenAI, which means its content is being used to train AI models and then redistributed back to users as part of search and discovery. At the same time, users, particularly Gen Z, are actively seeking out human-generated content—not polished brand messaging or single definitive answers, but lived experience, contradiction, debate, and advice that feels like it comes from real people dealing with real situations like parenting, money, housing, health, and sport. Jen Wong, Reddit’s chief operating officer, described this as an “antidote to AI slop.” Reddit, she says, isn’t clean; it’s messy. You have to sift through different points of view, and increasingly, that is the point. For communicators, this raises several important points. For a start, Reddit is no longer a niche platform you choose to engage with or ignore. It’s become part of the discovery layer of the internet. People may encounter your organization, your industry, or your issue there before they ever see your website or your carefully crafted statement. Search visibility is no longer just about content you own; it’s about conversations. Conversations at search engines and AI systems are now amplifying its scale. Many organizations are still quietly hoping Reddit will remain hostile, chaotic, or irrelevant enough to ignore. That stance is becoming harder to justify when government departments are hosting AMAs (“Ask Me Anything”) and major public narratives are forming in plain sight. Finally, lurking is no longer neutral. Silence can allow perceptions—accurate or not—to solidify without challenge, context, or correction. So the question for communicators isn’t whether Reddit is for them, it’s whether they’re prepared for a world where human conversation, amplified by algorithms and AI, shapes reputation just as much as official messaging does. Look at the Omnicom layoffs announced not long ...