Reddit Drops r/atheism and r/politics as Defaults

On 17 July 2013, Reddit changed its list of 'default subreddits' — the communities to which all new and logged-out users are automatically subscribed, and which therefore dominate the site's front page. For the first time in nearly two years, Reddit removed two of its most prominent and most criticized defaults, r/atheism and r/politics, replacing them with five new communities including r/books, r/explainlikeimfive, r/television and r/gifs.

Reddit's official explanation, attributed to community manager Alex Angel, was deliberately vague: the two subreddits 'just weren't up to snuff' and had not continued to grow and evolve like other communities. Both had long been lightning rods — r/atheism for its low-effort image-macro culture and r/politics for low-quality partisan link-spam and accusations of brigading.

The move was significant because it underscored that Reddit, despite branding itself as a neutral platform, was making editorial curation decisions using metrics such as traffic and subscriber growth — thereby assuming greater responsibility for what it elevated. r/atheism, once one of the largest communities on the site, lost its automatic stream of new subscribers, and its growth and front-page prominence declined sharply afterward.

Reactions within the affected communities ranged from outrage to relief that the default set was now more ideologically neutral. The episode is an early, clear illustration of the tension between Reddit's self-image as a hands-off platform and the editorial choices implicit in deciding which communities to amplify.