Reddit CEO Apologizes Days After User Revolt Over Firing Of Popular Figure

We haven’t communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes….

In her post this morning, Pao admitted a pattern of mistakes. But for today at least, reddit‘s overlords are listening, and its user rebellion sets a precedent that in the future, the demands of a vocal minority can and will be heard.

NOTE: Image above derived from the original GunShowComic panel.

Victoria Taylor (known as “chooter” on the site) was responsible for arranging numerous Ask Me Anything Q&As, including one with Barack Obama, Channing Tatum and Julian Assange. “She will be the contact for moderators with reddit and will help figure out the best way to talk more often”, Pao wrote.

Today interim CEO Ellen Pao issued an apology to Reddit users and moderators for not communicating the changes they are attempting to make well enough.

“We hired someone to product manage it, and we moved an engineer to help work on it. We hired five more people for our community team in total to work with both the community and moderators”.

Look reasonable to you?

By the weekend, more than 100 Reddit subs were down, including majorly popular ones such as r/videos, r/gaming, r/AskReddit, r/science, r/history, and r/movies.

In an interview with Time, Pao said she wanted to apologise to Reddit users and added that the management should have informed moderators earlier about personnel changes.

The petitioners have alleged Pao of having stern and disadvantagous censorr laws, which can not be welcomed by Reddit users, atleast.

Users and moderators speculate Taylor’s dismissal was related to a chaotic AMA she hosted with Rev. Jesse Jackson, though Reddit has denied the claim. “A vast majority of the Reddit community believes that Pao, “a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top”, has overstepped her boundaries and fears that she will run Reddit into the ground”. Since then, dozens of other subreddits – each with several million subscribers – have also been made private, instead re-directing readers to a static landing page.

“We rely heavily on the moderators and we really depend on them”, she said.

CNN reported an online petition calling for Pao to resign also 156,000 signatures by Monday.

Moderators are also unhappy on the lack of communication between mods and admins, the latter employed by Reddit, the ex- volunteers for subreddits.

If Reddit doesn’t handle its community carefully, it might go the way of Digg, a similar discussion site that spurred its users to a mass exodus over some aggressive monetization efforts.

Following the backlash to Ms Taylor’s sacking, Ms Pao released a statement saying “I want to apologise for how we handled the transition yesterday”.