The "Sips Tea" subreddit is not just a place for memes and funny pictures. According to its bio, it's also "Reddit's #1 source for entertainment, news, and pop culture." Today, most people get their news online, but Reddit isn't the number one source for most Americans.
According to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey, only 9% of Americans get their news from Reddit. The most popular platforms through which people stay informed are Facebook (38%) and YouTube (35%). Others go to Instagram (20%), TikTok (20%) or X, formerly known as Twitter (12%), to get their news.
YouTube is also the most popular platform when it comes to entertainment. A whopping 84% of Americans report using it, and it's probably because it offers the widest range of content. There are podcasts, commentary, gaming, sketch comedy videos, and even shows you would regularly watch on TV that upload their content on YouTube.
Reddit, on the other hand, is more for niche communities. 26% of Americans use Reddit regularly, but it's more of a place for fandoms, gaming, hobby communities, meme culture, and just good ol' trolling. Of course, it can also be a breeding ground for misinformation, but such is the way with self-regulated communities.
Fighting misinformation on Reddit is a Sisyphean feat. As the moderator of r/politics, u/Qu1nlan, explained to NPR in 2019, "We are a team of about 50 moderators on a subreddit of 5.6 million people. We don't have resources that a team like Facebook or Twitter might have with tons and tons of paid fact-checkers," he went on.
"So generally, when we see fake news that we know is not factually correct, we'll go ahead and encourage our user base to go ahead and fact-check it themselves and also comment – say, well, here's why this news is fake, and here [are] the sources to back it up. And here's why you shouldn't believe everything that you see on the Internet."
