Ellen Pao - and Reddit's administrators in general - have been under fire over the past week due to the decision to fire Victoria Taylor, the moderator of Reddit's hugely popular AMA subreddit, where the masses can interact with and interview celebrities and famous personalities, including Bill Gates and Barack Obama.
Taylor facilitated these events and while the reasons behind her termination have not been divulged, some suggest that it was because of Reddit's management wanting to monetize AMAs more aggressively, something that Taylor had objected to. This did not go down well with the other moderators on account of a lack of transparency and poor communication, prompting protests across the site and resulting in over a third of the site becoming inaccessible as other moderators took down their respective subreddits in a show of solidarity.
While Reddit's management was initially dismissive, with the rising chaos and increasing dissatisfaction of both the moderators and users, Pao issued an apology last Tuesday, saying "We screwed up." It seems to not have been enough, however, as the wave of negative opinion has forced her to step down, with former CEO and Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman taking over effective immediately. She will still remain on the board in an advisory capacity.
Along with Reddit board member Sam Altman's announcement, Pao herself has now commented on her resignation:
After more than two years at reddit, I have resigned today. My first day was April 1, 2013 (go orangered!), and every day since has been an adventure.
In my eight months as reddit’s CEO, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on reddit. The good has been off-the-wall inspiring, and the ugly made me doubt humanity.
I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me. When people make something up to attack me or someone else, it spreads, and we eventually will see it. And we will feel bad, not just about what was said. Also because it undercuts the authenticity of reddit and shakes our faith in humanity.
What has far outshone the hate has been the positive on reddit. Thank you, kind strangers, for expressing your support. You gilded me 100 times. (For those of you who apologized for generating a wave of accusations that I gilded myself, please don’t feel bad. You did a good thing.) And thank you for sending cute animal pics and encouraging me to "Stay safe!" when the site overheated with expressions of hate in various forms. There were some days when your PMs inspired me more than you can imagine.
Most touching were the stories from regular users. Some told of people they knew who had committed suicide for being transgender or exposed in revenge porn. Others shared their experiences of being harassed and expressed empathy and gratitude. More recently, several users apologized for trolling me and for not giving me the benefit of the doubt when the troll hivemind moved against me. Initially users said they were afraid to post supportive messages openly; recently they started fighting back against the trolls publicly on reddit with support, corrections and positive messages.
So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles.
You will be in good hands -- our strong leadership team will now be led by u/spez, one of reddit’s original co-founders. Like u/kn0thing, he’s lived and breathed reddit since its inception and will work passionately to ensure reddit’s success.
Thank you to all the users who shared your excitement about reddit and what we’ve done and for encouraging everyone to remember the human. And thank you for making my time here at reddit an amazing learning experience.
Source: Reddit
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