Reddit app coming to Xbox One

The Xbox One will be home to a new app which enables users to keep an eye on controversial internet community Reddit, Microsoft's Larry Hyrb has revealed.

ReddX will be the first time the site will be available via a dedicated television app, he claims, with the app being 'snappable' to any other window on the Xbox One. That means that players will be able to keep an eye on threads, replies and messages whilst gaming, watching or browsing.

"Thanks to ReddX, redditors can interact with each other in similar ways to the Reddit.com experience, and in addition unlock unique media achievements named after some of the Internet's favorite memes," said Hyrb, via Microsoft's official YouTube channel.

Whilst the move will likely be popular with Redditors, there may well be something of a backlash, too. Reddit's community is renowned for its somewhat outspoken and often unpleasant nature, with several threads devoted to gore and nudity, with some photos of women allegedly uploaded without their consent. Until a CNN report in 2011 which lead to it closing, one of the site's most notorious threads was R/jailbait: a photodump of underage girls in various states of undress or provocation. For some time, "jailbait" was the second most popular search time driving traffic to the site. Reddit has since enacted a very public policy against illegal imagery.

Nonetheless, Reddit still remains a byword for racism, sexism and homophobia for many, despite the presence of communities which are attempting to counter those values. A year after Anderson Cooper's CNN report, another scandal emerged focused on the subreddit /creepshots, which featured pictures of young women taken in public without their knowledge. Another expose followed, this time from Gawker Media, which exposed the identity of the subreddit's moderator. That report also revealed that the user violentacrez, a moderator of /creepshots, had also been involved in the /jailbait thread, actively deleting pictures which he and his fellow moderators thought might actually be of women who weren't underage. For some time, Reddit banned any links to the Gawker coverage.

Citing the ideals of 'free speech' and 'anti-censorship', Reddit's operators have defended the presence of offensive material. "Having to stomach occasional troll reddits like /r/picsofdeadkids or morally questionable reddits like /r/jailbait are part of the price of free speech on a site like this," said general manager Erik Martin.

Despite its murky depths, Reddit remains a tremendously powerful force, with successful posts potentially driving huge amounts of traffic to articles. Many sites, including this one, include Reddit submission buttons alongside those for other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.