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Reddit has been emerging as a pretty powerful political influence ahead of election 2012, relatively, and the social aggregation site is getting in on the Super PAC party- as BetaBeat points out, yet another PAC has emerged from Reddit’s diverse loins.
The site has a mixed but fairly definable user base, with strong support for internet freedom, legalization of marijuana, enthusiasm for Ron Paul and a general left-libertarian vibe. And while it may seem that a Super PAC for Redditors is an interesting development, Reddit general manager Erik Martin (hueypriest on the site) confirms that there are at least three “unofficial” Super PACs to come out of r/pac since the subreddit was formed.
Martin spoke to BetaBeat about the new venture, saying:
…as with all things on the internet, chaotic. But it’s chaotic good… You see things like all the unofficial PACs, people active in /r/runforit, new campaigns against bills in the EU. I think trying to reign everyone in a concentrated way would be exactly the wrong approach. The advantage of the Internet community is our distributed and fragmented approach. A ton of ideas get presented, good ones rise to the top.
Martin also says that the PAC’s name- “Test PAC, Please Ignore”- is a reference to one of the top posts of all time on Reddit, which was a test post asking Redditors to skim over it. Martin finds the selection of the name to be very appropriate given the way political activism on Reddit works:
Heh. It’s sort of a Reddit inside joke… it said “ignore.” Fitting I think. You can’t tell the Internet what to do… I think anyone who is trying to tell the Internet what to do now that “it has all this power” is not only mistaken, but counter productive.
Do you think Reddit’s influence will increase as the election draws nearer?
