"Mr President – you do realise that you’re going to break the internet right?" - President Obama crashes reddit site as he takes impromptu Q&A session
"Mr President – you do realise that you’re going to break the internet right?"; that was just one of the questions asked during President Obama’s surprise ‘Ask Me Anything’ chat with the public on reddit yesterday as he gears up for his re-election campaign.
The social news site is essentially a bulletin board system, where registered users submit entries which, depending on the number of ‘up’ or ‘down’ votes, can end up on the ‘front page’. The Ask Me Anything (AMA) feature allows users put themselves forward to be questioned by other users.
With the username PresidentObama, he appeared out of nowhere to talk with the public on varying topics, from Afghanistan to sports teams to the beer brewed at the White House.
Within 15 minutes the forum had almost 2000 comments and, as the site struggled with the flood of traffic, it began intermittently crashing. At one point a Twitter user commented that over 200,00 people were on the forum, a figure eclipsing the sit's previous high of 130,000.
President Obama left the site 30 minutes later as the forum hit nearly 13,000 comments, more than 40,000 ‘up’ votes and 24,000 ‘down’ votes and 1.8million subscribed readers.
Obama has updated his campaign site to include a Redditors for Obama donation page as part of his re-election effort.
Speaking on Internet Freedom the president said: “Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody – from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business.
“And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle – and it will be reflected in the platform,” he wrote.