Reddit “We Screwed Up”

The admin in question is one Victoria Taylor, who coordinated the Ask Me Anything (AMA) events that give users a chance to have Q&A sessions with popular figures such as celebrities and politicians, which has even included President Obama in the past.

In response, hundreds of message boards on Reddit went dark in an apparent protest.

This afternoon, Pao posted a 335-word apology for Reddit’s “long history of mistakes” over the past few years, in the wake of a holiday weekend crisis in which prominent subreddits were closed off to the public by moderators.

She went on to acknowledge a litany of sins, focusing on poor communication from site administrators about major changes, broken promises and a lack of responsiveness to concerns from users.

Pao apologized for not keeping moderators despite the changes Reddit administrators were planning and told NPR Reddit “relies heavily on the moderators”, and “what we learned from this event is that we need to communicate better with them”.

She added, “When you’ve had feedback or requests, we haven’t always been responsive”.

“We will work closely with you all going forward to ensure events like today don’t happen again. I’d really like to understand how we can help solve these problems, because I know r/IAmA thrived before her and will thrive after”, he wrote.

A change.org petition calling for Pao’s resignation as CEO of Reddit Inc. now has almost 200,000 signatures.

There have also been several subreddits created exclusively for criticizing and ridiculing Pao such as r/ellenpaohate and r/paomustresign, and some redditors have taken to referring to her as “Chairman Pao”.

And the community has vocally said they want Pao gone.

Pao, who came under pressure last week when Reddit’s moderators – volunteer users who police the thousands of “subreddits” that make up Reddit – took down large sections of the site, issued a statement on Monday night.

While Reddit would not comment on the specifics of Taylor’s dismissal, the company said it was working on providing its moderators with a better infrastructure and support network. The subreddit’s moderators added that Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian had reached out over the weekend, in a preliminary effort to smooth the transition and put into place a new workflow for scheduling and hosting AMAs. Others have argued on the site that she was protesting attempts to monetize more aspects of the site.

The signatories to a petition to remove Pao, now exceeding 132,000 gathered in just three days, cited in their petition Pao’s legal battle as proof of what kind of person she is.

She has not said why she was fired, but answered a question on the site to say she was “dazed” by the decision.