Study: Your Favorite Subreddit Is Slowly Becoming a Bureaucracy

A research team — including Jon Kleinberg, a well-known Cornell computer scientist — analyzed the written rules of Reddit's millions of communities from 2011 to 2023. Using software to sort and compare that text, they found the platform drifted steadily toward formal, written rulebooks. They identified seven distinct styles of community governance, and found the shift was essentially one-way: internet forums, like offices, accumulate policies over time.

Two forces drive it. First, a "ratchet effect": existing communities keep adding rules but almost never delete them, so rulebooks only grow. Second, a generational shift: new communities increasingly launch with pre-written rule sets, often copied wholesale from similar forums, instead of inventing rules as problems arise. The single strongest predictor of how many rules a community has is simply its size — the bigger the crowd, the more management it needs.

Copying, however, is picky. Communities gladly borrow rules about content (what you're allowed to post), since they face the same topical headaches. But they resist copying rules about how people should behave or how the place is run day to day. Communities that share the same members tend to differentiate rather than imitate each other, competing for their own niche. And fame doesn't matter: popular communities aren't copied any more than obscure ones.

What this means for you: the internet's town squares are becoming more like gated communities with posted rules at the entrance. That can mean less harassment and spam — but also more hoops to jump through, more deleted posts, and less spontaneity. The catch: this study covers Reddit alone, and it measures rules as written, not how strictly moderators actually enforce them.