reddit bills itself as the home to endless conversation and authentic human connection and for the first time in its 20—year history it has turned a profit. also in the uk, reddit has now passed x, in terms of popularity. it's seeing a surge of users. we have been speaking to the journalist james paul about what is going on. so reddit is a lot more old school than other social networks. it might be new to a lot of people but it has been around pretty much as long as facebook and if you have ever been on a forum or bulletin board, that is what it is, looks like that, maybe like a common thread below an article but has lots of different subreddits on different topics. if you are interested in foreign affairs there is a serious foreign news

board that is run by one group of volunteers. if you are into pets and cat memes, there is a thread. there are threads about leaving the usa, advice threads and agony aunt threads, you name it, and the special thing about reddit is each community sets its own rules. there are baseline ones, some enforced across the site but it means instead ofjust being one community on facebook, you follow mark zuckerberg's rules, x you follow elon musk's rules, it is thousands of communities that set their own of doing things. way of doing things. that is what you are talking about, moderating themselves? pretty much. there are rules on you cannot do illegal things, share images of child abuse, rules against harassment across the site that can get you banned from reddit, and you can complain about them, like you could on any other social network, but each sub—forum has its own volunteer

moderators, and they get to set their own rules, and so, take the foreign affairs one, you cannot post comment pieces in there. you can post a news article and people will discuss that article. but if you start getting off topic, or do random things, orjoking around, you are gone. that might not be fun, might sound horrible to a bunch of people, but that is what that community likes and what they can do and if you do not like that, you can set a subreddit that has sillyjokes about foreign news, where that is allowed. we are not talking about people being gone. they have a surge in users. why? you can tailor your own experience. mark zuckerberg has decided people do not want to see news, so news is really heavily downgraded on instagram and facebook now. elon musk has decided you want to see what

people who pay for a blue tick say. on reddit, you can pretty much tailor what you see by choosing which communities you are interested in, and because they are smaller, the biggest reddits have millions of people on, but some have tens of thousands or a few hundred. you get to know people in the community, get a sense of identity with it and so it is quite a different experience but it is retro. this is not new, not a brand—new concept, this has been around for ages and has been rediscovered, and people are liking it. how does it make money? as ever with the internet, it makes money with adverts, but it also has a bunch of other things. people can pay reddit money to say thank you to another user. you can send them, essentially... what is reddit money? you pay... sorry, i thought you meant money, my goodness. it has social currency. they look like stickers to put on their profile to say, you did a great post, or we like this. reddit gold is the most common, and people will pay to be nice

to each other orjoke around. that sounds nice. they have never made megabucks, it's never grown as fast as the other networks but it seems to be having a slow and steady wins the race. james, you are describing its particular approach to moderation within the different communities inside reddit. let's learn more about this moderation with the help of robert h peck, a reddit moderator, wired contributor and lecturer at the university of iowa. you are very welcome on the media show. why did you choose to become a moderator on reddit? james has talked a lot . already about the ability to tailor your experience, to things you enjoy - and invest yourself a lot. in the smaller communities that interest you. that is what got me| into the site at first. i spent a lot of time on pages tailored . to my own interests and i felt| i wanted to give back to those things. i felt a sense of- belonging and felt i had something to offer and one thing you can do on redditl

if you feel that way is take some time i to try and make them better, i help set some rules that james is describing or take time | to try and enforce policies yourself. as i got into doing moral and more of that, i found it was a satisfying way- to participate in these pages where i felt that belonging. so give us an idea what that involves. you decide to spend hours working as moderator, open your computer. what are you actually doing? there are many different activities you might take| on, across various subreddits, the most common activities i vetting — new content posted by people visiting the pages, orthings posted by people coming there, whether image or videos, - comments they are . leading and volunteers vet a huge majority of that, l so someone like me may go on and go — to something like the cute animals or memes subreddit, and see all the new posts and comments made and decide, i are these are appropriate to be here or not? _ are there strict rules for the cute animals subreddit? it depends on what|

you mean by strict. we would not allow something like... l that wasn't cute. not so much. we would have rules saying do not post . sad things here but in terms of what is cute or a meme, i most of the time that is up to the i people posting. what happens if you take a decision in good faith about something that can or cannot appear within the community you are moderating but other moderators within that same community do not agree? how do you resolve that? most of us have back—channel conversations _ going on all the time, - there's facilities on and off reddit, chat rooms where we chat, and many- of us get to know each other and i encounter these disputes often, and have fairly sophisticated - systems to resolve i them, either by vote or systems of seniority or other practices in place to try - to establish some l kind of consistency. this sounds like a huge commitment, one which you are fond of taking on, but nonetheless a lot of work, and you are helping maintain a platform that is now a publicly, a public company that's

posting profits. do you feel like you should be paid? i think you get - different answers from different people. personally, i think that is not what i am in it for. _ i like the things i'm . seeing there, and if it became a job, i would feel the sense i had to be - here, and had to be doing a certain thing and. the way my bosses were telling me to do it and i would - personally hate that l and quit immediately. i would love it if i had more control over the decisions l being made, at a higher level of the site, some input - on these larger rules . across the site or higher decisions, like that initial public- offering that reddit took lastl year, when it became a public company, were made. most people would say - they want some control over, some state beyond control over the individual- communities in some sense of investment as opposed . to being paid to dol that work which i do not know if it would i appeal to everybody. i think for me personally that is not why i am - in it. great to speak to you. before you go there will be people listening who will think, i will try this

for the first time. what one bit of advice would you give someone opening up reddit for the first time to make the most of it? i think a lot of people - when they're getting involved, they do not make an account, they sort of lurk as it is - called, where they stay back i from the conversation. get involved. a huge majority of comments and participation are - made from a tiny percentage| of the user base and the best way to get something out i of the communities is to get involved and start _ participating the way i have. i think it will be fulfilling for a lot of folks. - thanks. we will wait to hear from listeners to see if they find it that way. that is robert h peck. a lecturer at the university of ohio. james, let's bring you back in. are you a lurker on reddit? that is not really my question but as you said it, are you actually involve? i have lurked for more than a decade. a long time lurker! i've posted maybe five times in 15 years.

i read it every day, read it dozens of times a day, i do not post. i watch. fair enough. are there lessons to be learned from its approach to moderation? i think there are. they never promised moderators a share of the company. people knew they were volunteering for a for—profit, but people got communities out of it they had control over. other social network never gives you control, and that is clever. and also, mark zuckerberg's responsible for setting rules for 2 billion of us, that is how many of us are on his different social networks. try and find one rule that works for a teenage boy in britain, a republican housewife in america and a chinese businessman. you will struggle. by letting people, setting a baseline letting people do different things in subcommunities, suddenly, it can work, can be smaller, more flexible. that, i think, is clever and that i think gives reddit some lasting appeal, even if it still has its tensions. some people, not least

on this show, have been talking about bluesky, the platform gaining followers. what is their approach to moderation? they have ideas to try and do something, but at the moment it is moderated just like twitter was, and they have a small team, who is now being flooded with a lot more users, there are bots on there now, i have had spam accounts, i've had someone impersonate an old boss of mine, and i spotted it was dodgy when she asked if i wanted to buy crypto, which she does not usually do. you didn't say yes i would? they are trying to hire moderators. at the moment, they are doing things the same way. they have some great innovations. you can pick your own algorithm on bluesky, you can choose from a feed, saying, show me people who have not posted much, show me cute animals, or show me things i have not seen. that is new, that is clever, but at its core, at the moment, bluesky is trying to moderate like everyone else does and will

have the same problems if it keeps up with that. suggestions bluesky is talking the reason people are moving to is the suggestion they don't want to be on x, and elon musk has seemingly confirmed x is de—prioritising post with links. just explain that and what that means for the open web. for a lot of us the joy of twitter or x as it is now is you could discover cool things elsewhere on the internet. it was the new social network. you went on there to discuss what is happening. x is much less good for that now. elon musk's philosophy is you should not leave the site, and links make you leave the site, so they're bad. you should post everything on there and stay there, and that has killed value of it tojournalists, who could say, yes, we could say to our bosses, yes, i'm spending loads of time on there but they are driving people to the site.

i am not sure he has journalists in mind. no. he is deliberately moving away from it. journalists go, you do not want us here so— where else does? i post my articles for the new european on bluesky. people still want an open web, to discover stuff, but elon is telling you how he wants you to use his network, and that tends to struggle. but elon musk isn't the only person in charge of a big platform, who would much prefer you stay on that platform. arguably, he has simply moved x in line with how some of the other platforms have been for a long time. i think this is their weakness, though. uk newspaper bosses got very obsessed in the 2000s over the idea of never linking out so people stayed on the site, and instead people go, you are not giving me the best experience, not thinking about me, you are thinking about you. that is when users tend to leave, when you get beaten.

i think if these companies started going, what is the best experience for the user, they would do better. they are chasing metrics. doing quite well, by most measures. are they? they are richer, but do they feel original and creative still? tiktok does. facebook feels like it is sitting there as the incumbent waiting to be beaten. that was the journalist, james ball. last week in syria, rebels launched their biggest offensive against the assad regime in years. leading the offensive was an islamist rebel group. as ever, the battle also rages online and to discuss how both sides are using the media in this conflict, we werejoined by dr charlie winter from the international centre for counterterrorism. rather like any islamist—insurgent or non—islamist insurgent

group in syria today it has a network of official owned outlets through which it produces video content, photo reports, radio programming, music, and it has a sprawling network of aligned outlets, which essentially share its message, amplify the stuff that official outlets are making, and just creates that really comprehensive holistic worldview it is trying to push. and is it trying to change its image in any way? is it using the media for that purpose? definitely. hts is a really interesting one because it came out of the same organisation from which we got isis. who were very good at using the media. they were, and went on to carry out a load of terrorist attacks outside syria. syria was a means to an end for isis, whereas for hts, syria is the end in itself, and that transition over the last ten years or so has been something where the media has been fundamental to communicating that this group, that was essentially a jihadist actor, like isis, is now more run—of—the—mill rebel syrian

group, focusing on syria. its priority is the syrian people, the syrian revolution, and even today i was looking at one of hts's channels, its leader is walking around the citadel in aleppo, surrounded by people who don't look like your average hts member. it is all about communicating that he is notjust a military commander, but a man of the people, and they have done a lot of effort to cultivate that kind of refreshed image him over the years. and what are we talking, we're notjust talking audio and video, we're talking about music and memes, what are they pumping out? yes, like any self—respecting islamist group these days, they have outlets that are dedicated to producing music, so that can be music which is specifically religious in connotation, it can be music which is specifically meant to go with the battlefield footage, that kind of thing. memes, there is a whole industry of hts memes producers,

a couple of months ago, or maybe a couple of years ago, actually, the leader of hayat tahrir al—sham was buying falafel in a street in idlib, and thatjust sparked a whole lot of quite peculiar falafel meme content, but essentially these are just people trying to make content that gets a message across and gets a big spread. and were they using it, in the recent events, they are presumably harnessing it for the latest offences? absolutely. media, communication in general, is really at the heart of the offensive, and it is as important as the actual military operations themselves. so videos showing hts fighters and aligned fighters taking over new territories, places in aleppo or hama in central syria, footage of people walking around places that were regime—held territories just a few days ago, that sends a very strong message, not just to supporters of hts in syria itself, but also supporters

of the regime. it is all about psychological effect here, and essentially scaring people into a state that they leave the places they are seeking to currently defend. and we often talk about which platforms are being prioritised. in terms of hts, it is making all of this different content, but to its media operation, which are the most effective platforms to reach the people it is trying to reach? so, generally speaking, a lot of this content is starting first on telegram, and from telegram making its way onto x. telegram being the messaging app. it is a bit like whatsapp, but also has a lot of features which are a bit like facebook so you can have a channel where you are just producing one—directional content. it is a really good way to broadcast message and media to a very

large number of people. and presumably the assad regime is trying to respond through its media channels to the messaging coming from the rebels. yeah, absolutely, and the claims the syrian state media agency are making are absolutely nuts. just after aleppo fell, they claimed it hadn't fallen, but it was just actors walking around aleppo, pretending it had fallen, and that is the kind of calibre of news reportage you should expect from syrian state media, but it is very much a battle of the media at the moment in syria, with different sides having very different narratives. now to the queen of the fashion world, anna wintour. she is the legendary editor—in—chief of vogue, and i went to meet her. you got this interview, didn't you, katie, all in connection to this new immersive experience, an exhibition in london, titled vogue: inventing the runway?

i felt the history of the runway would be a very evocative and interesting immersive experience for the audiences to see and to understand, because it really does put into context everything that was happening not only in our industry but indeed culturally around the world. what we were very, very keen with this show is to make sure that you felt what it would have been like to be there. what i love about this show, and i hope what audiences will understand when they sit here, is how fashion reflects the times. whether it is political, or humanitarian, or through other forms of the arts, fashion never, never exist in a vacuum. what struck me is how it has democratised over... yeah, it started as a very elitist, you had to be invited and you weren't even allowed to sketch or take a picture at the couture shows in the beginning,

because the clothes being shown, they were so frightened that they would leak and to be shown to others and they would copy them. it was a very, very protected world, a very tight little world, and now everyone can come to the party, which is as it should be. absolutely. i would say this show mirrors as much the history of your career as the history of the changes in fashion. you come from a family ofjournalists, i know you love journalism, but what would you say to people who argue that fashionjournalism is sycophantic, it doesn't ask the hard questions? i think that is simply not true. sometimes i think it is frustrating to us that work in fashion that there is an outside perception that fashion is frivolous and superficial, and in fact it is a huge business, we give employment to millions of people around the world, it is a serious business, and many different layers involved.

it is a very creative business, it is very easyjust to look at the surface and not really understand the many, many layers behind what they see on a runway, or online, or on their instagram accounts, or in a video or in pages of a print magazine or a print newspaper. there are many, many different avenues to present fashion today, and that has actually made one's work so much more challenging in a way, but also vastly more interesting. and you have championed so many designers, so many creative and cultural figures over the years, through this incredible career that you have had. you are 75, you are still at the top of your game, your energy seems undiminished. how have you managed to stay in that position for so long, and what still drives you? well, i... i think what drives me is having this fantastic platform that i feel very honoured to have.

i also love mentoring people within the company, and outside the company, and challenges are almost what spurs me the most. a lot of the initiatives we have started out at vogue or at conde nast have come out of difficult times, whether that is covid, or the tragedy of 9/11, trying to help young designers at that time, who lost everything. i think difficult times honestly make people more creative, and think in different ways, and that, if everything is easy, it's not as interesting. one of the big talking points in fashion is how thin, how thin is too thin? we see these wonderful, beautiful models in this show, all of them very slim. when it comes to cover stars, i suppose it is always a perennial,

how thin is too thin? many years back, you said, and i know it wasjokingly and very gently, you advised oprah winfrey to shed a few pounds to get on a cover, and she did and she looked amazing, but would you still suggest that now or has the world changed? i think vogue stands very much for body diversity today, and we really talk a lot to the designers and the casting agents about having more body diversity on the runways, we certainly try to do that in the shoots that we commission, whether they are digital or print or video, whatever it may be. so we try very hard to have diversity and representation around the world. obviously, there are cultures, like some obviously, there are cultures, like some of the cultures in asia, where people tend to be much more naturally thin.

i am interested in how the world, even more so, post—olympics, has been so fascinated by the world of sport and i think those young men and young women project a vitality and obviously a level of fitness that most of us can't dream of achieving, and i think that that role model and those body shapes are very encouraging and inspiring, so i do think that we have seen some change, certainly not enough, but hopefully... sorry to interrupt, if you put somebody who is a slightly larger size on the cover, does it make a difference to sales? people used to say diversity makes a difference, in terms of who you put on the cover in sales. no, i think our audiences welcome diversity, body diversity, and diversity in all ways, in all our coverage. and as we see from this show, you have turned vogue into a global brand. how much longer do you plan to stay on the job? well, i have no plans

to leave myjob currently. does that mean you would go on to 80, 85? 90? i'm worried about today, not tomorrow. that is our time up, thank you very much indeed for watching and we will see you at the same time next week. and if you would like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc pod casts. hello, there. for many of us, tuesday was dominated by lots of grey skies, lots of cloud across the uk. for the central belt of scotland, it was fog, which persisted in glasgow all day, and as a result, the temperature for most of the day didn't get above —1 celsius. so, freezing fog, and we start off wednesday with some of that fog once again. temperatures overnight as low as —8 celsius, so a cold start to wednesday.

for england, wales, more cloud here, as temperatures are about three to six celsius, but throughout wednesday, we keep this area of high pressure. this is what we've seen throughout the day on monday and tuesday, really, so not a great deal of change to what you experience outside, the freezing fog likely to continue across some parts of central and southern scotland. sunshine elsewhere across scotland, except the northern isles, where there's a bit of rain here. maybe a few brighter skies in northern ireland, the far north of england. elsewhere, though, it remains pretty cloudy on wednesday afternoon. for many of us, temperatures about six to eoght celsius. colder than that across scotland, especially where you keep that fog. so in glasgow, for example, again, the temperature may not get above freezing. now, through wednesday night, the temperatures fall away again pretty quickly across scotland, with those clear skies, fog just turning more dense, again, in some central areas. more cloud elsewhere, and once again, that will keep temperatures above freezing, about 6 or 7 celsius. just the frost limited to the far north and the east of scotland. now, during thursday, there'll perhaps be a bit more

cloud across scotland. the best of the brightness towards the north and the east, still some fog patches as well. quite cloudy for northern ireland, through most of england and wales. we mightjust see a few spots of rain affecting eastern areas of england through the day on thursday, but temperatures once again fairly typical for the time of year. but i suspect it won't feel all that nice — quite cold beneath that cloud. on into the end of the week, we'll see a weather front moving south and eastwards across the uk, before high pressure then starts to build in for the weekend, and the air comes in from a different direction, actually, as we go through sunday, so you notice that the oranges come into our map, so the milder, south—westerly winds for the end of the weekend, and that means temperatures will rise quite significantly, actually, so you can see there on friday and saturday, still in single figures. by sunday, we'll be in double figures, and there'll be a bit of sunshine around as well over the course of the weekend. bye— bye.

welcome to newsday, i'm steve lai. the bbc has her testimony from syrians who fear for their lives after the ousting of president bashar al—assad. and from those whose lives were gassed by his regime and who

have been too afraid to speak out until now.