Reddit donates a massive wodge of cash to fighters for digital rights

James O'Malley Web 2.0, Websites
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Reddit, the popular aggregation website which is the source of most of the internets viral videos and incorrect terrorist identifications has done something nice with the profits it made in 2014 – donating 10% of them to ten worthy charities.

Pic from here.
Pic from here.

Each of the charities will be getting $82,765.95 each – with the ones most relevant to TechDigest’s interests being the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the WikiMedia Foundation, Free Software Foundation and the Tor Project.

The EFF is the leading organisation that fights for ‘digital rights’ – such as online privacy, opposing censorship and for fairer copyright laws that will let digital types remix copyrighted works more easily. WikiMedia meanwhile is the organisation that runs Wikipedia, and the Tor Project runs anonymous browsing tool Tor, which enables encrypted communications.

The Free Software Foundation is the organisation that advocates in favour of free and open source software – arguing against proprietary standards such as MP3 in favour of the likes of OGG for music.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rest of the winning charities are exactly what you’d expect from Reddit: The Pro-Choice group Planned Parenthood, Doctors Without Borders, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and two groups that study/advocate for the legalisation of drugs. We’re just surprised that they’re not being paid in Bitcoin.

Its a savvy move as far as Corporate Social Responsibility goes – buying a tonne of user good will, which is essential for any website that tries to create communities.

James O’Malley
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One thought on “Reddit donates a massive wodge of cash to fighters for digital rights”

  • I think it is nice to see groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation get rewarded for the hard work that they do on keeping the government out of religion. It also reflects a notable gulf between the Reddit crowd (mostly under 40) and the talk radio crowd (mostly over 60). A social change is brewing and Reddit is giving us a clear picture of where it is headed.

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