# Reddit CrosspostNet--Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosposst Graph Networks
## 4 Characterizing CrosspostNet
### Edge Analysis  
We now take a look at the edges existing in CrosspostNet. Table 1 presents top-directed edges and the subreddits they join.  
There are several interesting observations. First, the largest numbers of crosspots are between three subreddits: r/AmITheAngel, r/AmITheDevil, and r/AmITheAsshole. All these three communities are used to ask questions and seek the moral judgement of other users, who vote as to whether the behavior of the poster was good (\"Angel\"), bad (\"Devil\", or \"Asshole\"). Interestingly, these social behaviors and the r/AmITheAsshole subreddi have a dedicated study and this finding is further elaborated in Section 5.2.  
Next, as expected, there are r/HolUp and r/Unexpected. These two communities already appear at the top of rankings, based on the node degree (see, above). What is interesting is that the relationship between r/HolUp and r/Unexpected (but also r/shiposting and r/memes--both communities about Internet memes) is very much one way. All three of those subreddits crosspost most often to r/HolUp, but there is not an edge in the top of edges from r/HolUp to any of these, or any other, subreddits. As of what concerns the rest of the ranking contains mostly pornography-oriented subreddits, a.o. r/NSFWGirI, r/babeorotica, r/BabesNSFW, etc.  
Figure 8: Top 50 subreddits (nodes) by average out-neighbor out-degree.  
However, there is one group of subreddits that is particularly outstanding. It is even visible to the naked eye when performing the graph network visualization. These are the subreddits related to the OnlyFans platform. OnlyFans is \"the 18+ subscription platform, empowering creators to own their full potential, monetize their content and develop authentic connections with their fans\" ([[https://onlyfans.com/about](https://onlyfans.com/about)]([https://onlyfans.com/about](https://onlyfans.com/about)), accessed on 22 August 2023). This group contains subreddits: r/OnlyFansPromotions, r/Slutsofonlyfans, r/OnlyfansXXX, r/onlyfanschicks, r/Gone/-Wild/-Onlyfans, r/AdorableOnlyfans, r/NaughtyOnlyfans, r/HotOnlyfans, r/Only/-fans/-Amateurs. These subreddits are not thematically related to the OnlyFans platform itself, but rather they have been created for the promotion of content creators, on said platform. The r/OnlyFansPromotions subreddit is central, as all other subreddits crosspost to it, while there are no known crossposts back to any of them. Specifically, there is not a single crosspost in the dataset from r/OnlyFansPromotions to another subreddit. Obviously, there could be some such subreddits in the times outside of these represented in the dataset, but there is no reason to believe that the existing dataset is an exception. A manual exploration showed that practically all crossposts into r/OnlyFansPromotions contain marketing content, promoting OnlyFans creators, which is confirmed by the name and purpose of this central subreddit. This shows that crossposts are used not only as a cross-reference between communities of similar interests. They can also be used for self-promotion. The fact that most crossposts are related to an 18+ website somewhat resonates with the fact that the biggest cluster of subreddits (identified when clustering was applied to them) is related to pornography (see, above and [14]).  
The last two observations are that r/soccer frequently crossposts to r/reddevils (a Manchester United soccer club subreddit) and r/vexillology crossposts often to r/vexillolo/-gycirclejerk (both subreddit related to the study of flags). Interestingly, these subreddit pairs crossposts both ways. R/reddevils has crossposts 256 (99 th percentile) to r/soccer meaning that although the crosspost relation is not exactly balanced, it is mutual. However, r/vexillologycirclejerk has only 10 crossposts (96 th percentile) to r/vexillology. This shows an asymmetric relation between those of the flag-related subreddits.