Dark, clear or brackish? Using Reddit to break down the binary of the dark and clear web
Simon Copland · Continuum · 2021
Using Reddit as a case study, this article blurs the boundary between the ‘dark’ and ‘clear’ web, arguing that in between these spaces there is what I describe as a ‘brackish web’, inhabited by ‘brackish social spaces’. Reddit, I argue, sits in a murky space between the dark and clear, with its technological rationality, politics, and technological affordances exhibiting elements of both the clear and dark infrastructures. I study these similarities through examining Reddit’s relationship to surveillance, arguing that it exhibits similarities to the dark web through a politics of anonymity and its practices of content moderation. Reddit, however, has slowly moved away from some of its ‘dark’ elements, in particular through a growing reliance on advertising revenue. This has pushed the platform to engage in more surveillance of its users, pushing it away from its dark web politics. This article challenges the dark and clear web binary, further nuancing our understandings of the politics, economics and technological rationality that underpins online digital platforms.