
Reddit boss apologises after staff sacking causes 'revolt' - adzicg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33395268/reddit-boss-apologises-after-staff-sacking-causes-revolt
======
SirensOfTitan
> But Ms. Pao says that the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal
> minority, and that the vast majority of Reddit users are uninterested in
> what unfolded over the past 48 hours.

This is an incredible simplification.

If we follow the 90-9-1 model: 1% of reddit's user base contributes new
content, 9% interacts with that content, and 90% are lurkers and consumers.
The 'vocal minority' are the content creators and contributors.

Reddit has hardly changed in its existence. Things like a search that works or
reasonable moderator tools have been promised for years to no avail. Reddit
has never had any decent product leadership, but their attempt to reign in
control of content has been disastrous.

Moderating content outside of removing illegal content is a really slippery
slope. It's incredibly difficult to get content standards right. Reddit, as it
becomes more mainstream, seems like its trying to get content standards under
control, but the cost is immense and might eventually end up alienating its
userbase.

~~~
mreiland
Where to begin.

> The 'vocal minority' are the content creators and contributors.

That term, content creator. That's a bit disingenuous in this case. It's rare
for anyone to create content specifically for reddit, the vast majority of
this content you're talking about is re-posted to reddit from other sources.

> Reddit, as it becomes more mainstream

Reddit is one of the largest sites on the internet, how much more mainstream
does it need to get before you stop characterizing it as "becoming
mainstream"?

The truth is, the company made a decision and the moderators got ansty and
threw the users under the bus in an attempt to make a power play.

The most virulent detractors _were_ a vocal minority, they were the mods of a
few large subreddits.

~~~
adevine
I call BS. One of the things that convinced me this (that is, how reddit
treats and responds to its mods) was a real problem, and not just some "angsty
mods", was the reaction from /r/AskScience. AskScience is one of the best
subreddits, largely because its moderation is so good. The fact that the
AskScience mods stood up in agreement with what was going on, and pointed out
how non-responsive admins had been, made me believe this is much more than a
"power play".

~~~
mcphage
> The fact that the AskScience mods stood up in agreement with what was going
> on, and pointed out how non-responsive admins had been

r/AskScience also has a lot of AMAs, and so was directly affected by
Victoria's firing in a way that most other subs were not.

~~~
adevine
While Victoria's firing may have been the impetus, it sound like general
unresponsiveness from the admins, as well as a lack of investment in moderator
tools, was the bigger complaint:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3by2nk/a_messag...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3by2nk/a_message_to_our_users/)
.

It sounds like any well-moderated, decently large subreddit would have reason
to be pissed.

------
exstudent2
She went into more detail in the NYT:

> But Ms. Pao says that the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal
> minority, and that the vast majority of Reddit users are uninterested in
> what unfolded over the past 48 hours.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-
moderato...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderators-
shut-down-parts-of-site-over-executives-
dismissal.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-
region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0)

I think MOST Reddit users would disagree with how things have been handled and
she does indeed seem out of touch with the user base. I don't see this turning
around and instead see it as an opportunity for up and coming players to steal
the user base (just like Reddit did to Digg).

~~~
jgrahamc
I suspect Pao is right. Most people who use reddit won't care about this. It's
very easy to get in a Silicon Valley bubble thinking this stuff matters.

EDIT: Downvoting me as a way of saying "I disagree" is immature.

~~~
waterlesscloud
"EDIT: Downvoting me as a way of saying "I disagree" is immature."

Downvoting for disagreement is officially sanctioned on this site. It's
annoying, but that's how it is.

~~~
madez
If HN wanted to reserve Downvotes for something else than the opposite of an
upvote, they shouldn't be graphically represented and placed and summed with
upvotes like they are now.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I've complained about the culture that results from using downvotes for
disagreement a number of times. I get zero response from the mods and numerous
downvotes for my troubles.

I'm done fighting it. I just downvote anything I even slightly disagree with
and move on. It's what the mods apparently want.

~~~
oldmanjay
It's interesting that you see no room for nuance in the mod system. Definitely
doesn't need to work the way you're expressing it here. In particular, your
petulant tone makes me think you wield downvotes vengefully.

Downvotes work best with an emotionally mature community. Fortunately HN seems
mature enough that discussion never really go off the rails, individuals with
your attitude notwithstanding.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Downvotes derail conversations here several times a day, your condescending
tone notwithstanding.

Apparently everyone is fine with that. So I see no reason not to be myself.

------
grey413
Even if you're not invested in reddit's fate (I'm a fairweather user myself),
this whole debacle has been a fascinating example of how to screw up community
management, and how that in turn ruins public relations. Good community
management is all about managing expectations and cultivating your userbase so
that they'll support you during rough patches. Likewise, good public relations
is all about controlling and influencing the narrative. Reddit-the-company,
has apparently failed on both fronts. First, they shut out their core of
dedicated, _free_ volunteers, giving them literally no reason to be loyal to
the company. As a direct result, reddit lost out on one of their best tools
for managing the narrative. So when Reddit co. undermined their most
prominent, productive volunteers by firing their staff liaison with no
warning, it's no damned wonder that the moderators turned on their "bosses".
Result? Instant PR nightmare, with next to zero available leverage for
controlling it.

The whole thing is a failure of management, pure and simple. Reddit's board
should be looking for blood.

------
s_dev
Reddit user of 5 years.

I don't see a Digg like exodus happening yet. I recall leaving Digg and
thinking with the new version that these guys were taking the piss and
completely out of touch with users.

Reddit hasn't gone quite that far but it definitely used to pride itself being
a free speech platform and thats changed now - locking sub reddits is
restricting ideas and behaviour despite what the admins say. You're only even
in favor of free speech so long as you tolerate things that are mean, awful
and sometimes even hateful. The bans, firing and lack of communications
weren't a good idea and didn't result in a "safer" reddit.

I don't think Ellen Pao is the right person to run Reddit. I think Reddit is
facing the same dilemma the music industry faced when they realised that their
best customers were also the ones to pirate the most music.

~~~
holyjaw
The Digg exodus was due, in part, to Digg rapid-fire iterating over new site-
wide designs in an era when the web was still learning how to deal with things
like asynchronous actions and dynamic (vs. static) content. One of the other
major issues with Digg v4 that I can remember was the use of iFrames to ensure
all traffic never left digg.com. This was also around the time of the Facebook
"like" button earning prominence on most sites.

Long story short, EVERY user was affected by Digg's changes and bugs. The
issues Reddit faces now affect only the moderators; users only feel the
secondary and tertiary affects of these conflicts.

There is not yet any impetus for a mass exodus.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
As I recall it the problem with Digg was that preferential treatment was being
given in secret for pay, or that is how things appeared. Also that a voting
ring had been established such that ordinary users could never get stories off
the bottom spots - they simply got duplicated by part of the 'diggerati' and
the alternate story gained the early traction needed to launch it to the top
pages. Thus the apparent notoriety, the focus that people crave, that pays
users back for their submissions was missing from the loop. Then the redesign
came and rubbed everyone up the wrong way; but it seemed to me more like the
straw that broke the camel's back (i.e. the last in a line of bad things)
rather than a reason in itself.

Similar things have happened at Slashdot, user disenfranchisement as the (new)
owners try to screw out every last cent from the site forgetting it needs the
community to be what it is. Hit with a second punch of not entirely well
executed redesign and you've got problems.

But then I think HN perhaps goes the other way, the more I stay the more I
hanker after some simple redesign to address the site's deficiencies
(collapsing comments threads for example, spacing the up- and down-vote
buttons). I'm a big believer in "if it ain't broke ..." but also consider that
a design should move with browser/web developments to, in an evolving way.
Mind you dang seems to do a great job with the moderating.

------
mahranch
Powermod and poweruser here. By that, I mean I mod 1 or more large default
subreddit and have been on reddit a long time.

We, the mods, have been asking for tools to properly manage our communities
for upwards of 4-5 years now. Pretty much as soon as subreddits were created,
we were needing tools. But back then, it was less of an issue because you only
had 20,000 subscribers (if you were lucky). Now, subreddits have 9 million
subscribers and the tools that were promised? Non existent. Instead, they roll
out things like snoovatars and redditgifts. It's literally a slap in the face
and just goes to show that management is so completely out of touch with their
own site that you can't help but laugh at it all. They spend money hiring
media coordinators, "creative director of video", "Head of round-up" (yes,
those are real positions at reddit) and sales reps instead of talented
software engineers and coders to support the people who keep their website
chugging along. The people _who do it for free_.

The issue: They started focusing on profits too soon. Reddit, back when it was
seeing a few million hits a month, was only a half finished product. Now it
sees 170 million unique hits a month and nothing has changed. It's still an
unfinished product. But after getting their $50 million investment, instead of
putting some of that money back into the website to bring us the tools we've
literally been begging for, they redoubled their efforts on finding ways to
monetize the site.

How to fix: Fire their CEO or whoever is responsible for laying out the
company's current goals. They were wrong. Anyone who actually knows and
understands reddit knew those goals were going to fail. Which means (or
proves) whoever was in charge was operating and making decisions out of
ignorance. They were making decisions without understanding their product. It
would be like me getting hired as the CEO of Walmart and I just start making
business decisions without knowing anything about their corporate structure or
needs. It's an obvious recipe for disaster.

The most surprising thing out of all of this was the realization that the
management at reddit was truly and really out of touch. I didn't want to
believe that to be the case because I like reddit. It's a sad thing to see
something you love being run by people who just don't know their own product.

~~~
ObviousScience
As someone who hasn't really had to deal with managing large communities or
being in the moderator position you're in... could you give a few examples of
tools you wish they'd provide for community management or ways you wish the
reddit corporate team would be in better contact with the community (besides
the obvious notifying when firing liaisons coordinating things)?

~~~
mahranch
I'd love too, but that would expose who I am on reddit because I've recently
recommended some of those tools to the admins. They're attempting to have yet
another dialogue and I'd prefer to keep this account and that one separate.

However, the consensus among the other mods I've talked to say that tools to
deal with undesirable elements, vote manipulation and other related curation
tools (possibly even the ability for mods to IP ban someone from their
subreddit) would improve the quality of individual subreddits (and by
extension, reddit itself) so much I can't really put it into words.

------
djhworld
I'm too much of a fairweather reddit user to really have that much of an
informed opinion on it really, I only I ever frequent the main programming
subreddits, a few local ones and /r/games. My frontpage feed doesn't subscribe
to any of the main subreddits either.

As far as I'm concerned this whole "revolt" seems like it's on some other
planet

~~~
mahouse
On the most populated planet, for that matter.

~~~
brobinson
On the highest-revenue generating planet, hence kn0thing's priorities having
"get the blacked out subreddits back online" before "work out a plan for going
forward".

[http://www.reddit.com/r/modclub/comments/3bypwq/rmodclub_ama...](http://www.reddit.com/r/modclub/comments/3bypwq/rmodclub_amageddon_discussion_thread/csqupsf)

Reddit really needs PR people. The administration's interactions with the
community during events like these are almost comically bad.

~~~
mahouse
> The administration's interactions with the community during events like
> these are almost comically bad.

Most of them are programmers, after all. ;P

------
staunch
> _" I want to apologize for how we handled the transition yesterday,"_

This is a great display of distancing language.

1\. The "I" becomes "we".

2\. Use of "apologize" over "sorry".

3\. Specifies the mistake as one of "handling".

4\. Refers to abrupt firing as a "transition".

~~~
cmsj
Also, "I want to apologise" is different to "I apologise". It's understandable
that people want to put as much self-sparing language in an apology as
possible, but it's the worst time to do it.

~~~
lepht
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance)

------
go1dfish
Now it's time for them to apologize for hiring former digg admins that brag
about nuking users.

[https://archive.is/cCxX3](https://archive.is/cCxX3)

They are quite literally TRYING to build reddit v4

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/352e9y/introducing...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/352e9y/introducing_reddit_original_video/)

------
sixQuarks
Reddit's biggest mistake was to raise $50 million at a $250 million valuation.
They are now a profit-seeking enterprise that goes against the grain of what
the site is all about. This is the beginning of the end.

~~~
dopeboy
They were a profit seeking enterprise from the beginning - they just kept
punting until that round. At some point the rubber has to hit the road.

I don't have the answers but I don't think monetizing the 31st most traffiked
is impossible. They have to think harder and dig deeper.

~~~
sixQuarks
I agree, they should be able to monetize it, but when the CEO doesn't know how
to use the site, that's a big problem. She simply doesn't understand the user
base. Reddit needs someone who understands the users and does a good job
matching up advertisers that want to reach those users (in a way that doesn't
feel like advertising). Perhaps only allow Reddit-approved advertisers.

------
joshstrange
> "At this point, however, the blackout has served its purpose, and now it's
> time to get Reddit functioning again," Alexis Ohanian wrote.

I like Alexis, I've read his book and seen his TED talk and think he is
overall a good guy. That said both this comment and the way he reacted on
reddit was extremely poor. This "apology" for Pao is shit and completely
empty. After years of ignoring the mods and the hard work they put in to make
reddit possible they tell everyone "You've had your fun, now start making up
money again". I'm not just ready to leave reddit for something like voat like
I left digg for reddit but this is not the first thing reddit has done
recently that rubs me wrong. Maybe this is just their Google-"Don't be evil"
transformation where they do things that the community thinks are not in
keeping with their stated mission but continues to use the platform because
it's better than most everything else out there...

------
shostack
Reddit user of 8 years here.

Note how the article shows them apologizing for how the transition was
handled, not the firing, which there are still no clear details on.

I hope they realized how much power the community holds. Reddit is fickle with
a long memory, and if the winds of favor start blowing the other way, there
will ALWAYS be someone dredging up the past any time you try to do anything in
the future.

Pao and any others involved in these decisions have done irreparable damage to
their community and its trust in Reddit's leadership. Reddit's success is
built on a notion of trust that few, if any social networks could ever achieve
because Reddit has consistently made choices in favor of the community, not
despite them. When that starts changing, so does the trust and the rest of the
relationship.

But maybe that's the goal and they are trying to drive out the people who care
about that while retaining the users who just want cat pictures and celeb
AMA's who don't give a crap about the drama or increasingly intrusive
advertising (I'm looking at you Alienblue feed ads that I can't downvote
enough). I'd be shocked if they didn't start selling audience data to brokers
like Axciom or Neustar at some point as well.

> "He said the team were also looking into ways to "improve being a
> moderator"."

Given how things went down, I wouldn't be surprised if that implied
restricting the ability for mods to make certain subs dark in the future. If
you are a content portal, you can't be letting your pesky users turn off the
tap whenever they want...bad for business.

I always wondered why Reddit never introduced paid subscription-based subs.
Let the community monetize and promote the platform, give them recurring
revenue and take a cut. Suddenly you are helping your users and helping
Reddit. Sure free alternative subs might be more popular for easily duplicated
content, but certain content areas could do quite well.

Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

\--EDIT--

Please don't interpret my statement about them not providing details of the
firing as a presumption that they should have or that I expected them to
expose themselves to liability--I'm not ignorant when it comes to how these
things go down. My (perhaps not clear enough) point is that there is no real
acknowledgement that she was good at executing on her job (from the standpoint
of the community and our perception) and the entire way this has been handled
has been in a cold corporate manner.

I get they are a business, but when you run a community like Reddit, the
Reddit employees who actively engage are part of that community, so it becomes
an inherently personal matter, like when you have to explain to a child why
you are divorcing your spouse. Sure you could just not explain it, but you
increase the likely hood of deep emotional scars that never heal if you handle
it poorly. As much as they would like this to be an internal situation, the
community is intrinsically intertwined in this so some deeper explanation that
satisfies this curiosity is more or less necessary to bring them around. Not
saying that is fair to Reddit or Victoria, just stating how the mob works from
my experience after 8+ years.

~~~
danso
> _Note how the article shows them apologizing for how the transition was
> handled, not the firing, which there are still no clear details on._

It's standard practice for a company to not disclose why someone was fired,
and this is often to the benefit of the former employee. Why do you think
you're entitled to know the private details of Victoria's employment?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Well, a Reddit CEO didn't hesitate to make public negative comments about a
fired employee.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_reddit_employee_ama/cl1ygat)

~~~
DanBC
And there was a massive shitstorm after they did that.

It's a good thing that Reddit does not reveal details of why people were
fired.

~~~
waterlesscloud
There are perfectly fine ways to discuss this situation.

The fact that Reddit refuses to take that path is a strong indication that the
reasons would reflect badly on the company.

------
mjklin
It's looking to me that the Wikipedia business model is the correct one for a
community site like Reddit. What are the chances of a Reddit clone surviving
on donations?

~~~
TD-Linux
Well, Reddit Gold is already basically donations. Have they released earnings
information?

~~~
dageshi
I see the bar fill up most days, I actually think reddit has missed an
opportunity by not expanding reddit gold and doing more interesting things
with it.

------
matchagaucho
Reddit is just not sustainable on $8M per year in ad revenue. Urgent changes
are required.

Sponsored AMAs are the first of many possible monetization strategies to take
Reddit to $100M per year, which in turn increase the value of employee equity.

AMAs are ridiculously undervalued when looking at the quality of celebs and
their monthly unique visitors.

If Reddit's own internal culture is indeed blocking the evolution of Reddit as
a media property, then Ellen is simply making the tough, fiscally responsible
decisions.

Snoop Dogg, a Reddit investor, didn't become a $135M franchise by undervaluing
his content and services. Reddit shouldn't either.

~~~
adevine
Totally disagree on this one, and I see in this sentiment the same thing that
brought down Digg.

"If Reddit's own internal culture is indeed blocking the evolution of Reddit
as a media property, then Ellen is simply making the tough, fiscally
responsible decisions." I call major BS, because reddit is NOTHING without its
"internal culture". Anything that has a whiff of promotion or spam on reddit
will kill it, at least if it's done in a way that doesn't respect its user
base. For example, it was rumored that Victoria Taylor was against video AMAs
for the reason that it would turn them into light puff pieces, instead of the
insightful, humorous, and sometimes hard-hitting interactions that the best
AMAs are.

~~~
matchagaucho
Promotions can be done natively while preserving "culture".

If J.J. Abrams does an AMA to promote Star Wars this December, does anyone
really care that Disney paid $200K to show an exclusive movie trailer to
Reddit fans?

If even 1% of Reddit users take that video viral, it'd add millions to the
opening weekend box office numbers.

[edit: nevermind measurable viral outcomes. The core question remains, can
Reddit can maintain it's culture with native ads/sponsorship?].

~~~
adevine
This makes no sense. Why would Disney pay any money at all to show an
exclusive trailer to Reddit fans, when they could just release it for free
elsewhere and have it go viral all by itself? Because that is exactly what
happened.

------
superuser2
The point brought up on Reddit (but not posted here) in the comments is
salient: if she were apologizing to the Reddit community, she would have made
a Reddit post. But she didn't do that - she went through old media channels.
This is in no way, shape, or form an apology to users, it is damage control
with investors.

------
hoopd
I have a strong suspicion that in the same way new CEOs and managers like to
do 'spring cleaning' of their staffs that reddit might like for the mods with
the old-reddit mentality to leave so they can be replaced with new mods more
in line with the "safe spaces and monetezation" goals of the site.

------
pbhjpbhj
Still no answer on the reason for the dismissal of the Reddit staff member,
other than speculation that it concerned a particular AMA. Disappointed that
they appear not to have even asked the question; if they had surely they'd say
there was "no comment" or refusal to answer or whatever.

IMO it makes a lot of difference if they were planning the dismissal for a
while and screwed it up or had to react to something like gross negligence or
misconduct - as the BBC was required to when Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear) hit a
member of the production team and the series was postponed mid-run.

Would be ever so interesting to see Reddit's stats and stats on exit pages and
the URL's visited outside Reddit by browser put off by the blackout. Maybe the
NSA will release an analysis at some point ;0)>.

------
legohead
My god, what a horribly written article, and by the BBC?

> Reddit went into virtual lockdown, with many of the sections made private
> after Victoria Taylor was fired.

Sections? Private? Explain this to your users, or use better wording.

> About 100 chat sections, or sub-reddits, that together have millions of
> readers are believed to have been shut, although are many are now again
> public.

Just..what? "have been shut", "are many are now"

> There had been no explanation of why she was suddenly sacked, said the
> administrators.

This makes no sense. Administrators are the employees/company. So you're
saying that the company just fired someone without knowing why? Maybe you
meant moderators?

~~~
orionblastar
Anything they say to the press can be used in a discrimination lawsuit. Pao is
a lawyer, she knows when to keep her mouth shut to the press.

It is better to say she doesn't know why Victoria was fired, than give an
actual reason that can be investigated. A CEO that doesn't know what their own
organization is doing is a poor CEO, but better to be seen as a poor CEO than
one that has a political agenda and fires people based on discrimination
principles.

Pao needs to be vague so they can't use her words against her in a lawsuit. It
is obvious she is trying to clean up Reddit to get better advertisers by
banning subs and users and firing people whom she thinks allows certain
behavior to go unpunished.

I heard that some users were posting links to her husband's Ponzi schemes, and
they were getting deleted. [http://nypost.com/2015/03/18/users-lash-out-at-
reddit-boss-f...](http://nypost.com/2015/03/18/users-lash-out-at-reddit-boss-
for-deleting-posts-on-hubbys-lawsuit/)

------
anon3_
The irony is reddit is a community website, the content is there thanks to the
users, not just the moderators.

Pao has so far shown herself to be deeply out of touch with core values of
reddit, I could elaborate.

However, Pao or not - how can you make a community-based site like reddit
profitable without betraying the fact your users are doing the heavy lifting?
I could elaborate here too.

~~~
adzicg
FB is an example of a system where all content is there due to users, but it's
profitable. On the other hand, at least from what I could see, FB never really
promoted any kind of special culture or community ethos.

based on that, at least two good ways to make a community-based site
profitable would be to use it as a platform for this party profit - allow
others to embed profitable apps/games/... and take a percentage of their
income, and sell ads based on people's interests.

~~~
istvan__
FB is actively changing how you see the world through it by removing the
content you do not like to see. This is how it yields to more divided society.

[http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-
polarizatio...](http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-
in-the-american-public/)

~~~
adzicg
why is this related to the question of making community sites profitable?
community-driven isn't the same as a non-divided society, lots of communities
form around various division lines.

~~~
istvan__
Removing the content you don't like comes in different shapes. Reducing
diversity is bad in the context of people and culture, why is it different
online? I know why, we need profit. Profit over people, profit over diversity.
Anyways, as some of the guys pointed out, Reddit had some good years.

