upvotes.tv

upvotes.tv is Reddit's front page with a short explainer video for every post. Scrimba runs it: the home page shows the top posts across all of Reddit, and every video on it is a Scrimba explainer. It isn't affiliated with Reddit.

Watching a post

The home page lists the day's biggest posts, each marked with the subreddit it came from. Switch between today, this week, this month, this year and all time to see the same lists as Reddit's own Top tabs. Today's rankings, votes and comment counts refresh every 15 minutes.

Press play on a post to watch its explainer. Nothing is made in advance: the first person to play a post generates its video and watches it build, and everyone after them gets it straight away.

If Scrimba is busy with other explainers, you're asked to try again in a moment.

Any subreddit

Search for a subreddit, or go to upvotes.tv/r/<name>, and you get its top ten for each period. The first visitor to ask for a subreddit brings it in; everyone after them gets it straight away.

Subreddits that are adult, private, quarantined or under 5,000 members aren't shown.

What the explainer covers

upvotes.tv reads each post, the article it links to and its comment thread ahead of time, and the explainer is built from those alone, without a web search.

It opens on the sharpest thing in the post or the thread and sounds like the best reply in it: conversational, candid, and matched to the community's mood.

When the thread has at least ten comments, the explainer ends with a section called "What r/… is saying": where commenters agree, where they split, and the strongest objection anyone raises. Commenters are never named.

A post on r/explainlikeimfive is treated as a question, and the explainer answers it from the best-supported replies instead of recapping the post.

A post with no article is explained from its discussion. So is a post whose article upvotes.tv couldn't read, and the explainer says so on its first slide.

Pictures

The pictures in an image post are shown on their own slides. Generated pictures use one flat graphic style in Reddit orange and a colour picked for the subreddit.

Made for the screen you're on

An explainer here is built for a phone or for a desktop, not both. On a phone, or in a window 560 px wide or narrower, upvotes.tv plays a tall one; anywhere wider, a wide one.

Each post can have one of each, generated by its first viewer on that kind of screen. See Vertical explainers.

The slides are chosen to read on a phone: images, infographics, animations, cards with at most two cards each, and code only when the thread is about programming. There are no diagrams, math or quizzes, since their text is too small on a small screen.

On scrimba.com

Every upvotes.tv explainer is also a public explainer on scrimba.com, published by Scrimba rather than by whoever played it first. On scrimba.com, two buttons under the title lead back: Watch on upvotes.tv opens the post on upvotes.tv, and Reddit discussion opens its thread on Reddit.

upvotes.tv explainers are kept out of the community feed, so they don't crowd out what people publish.

For the same thing on Hacker News, see hn.watch.