
Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors - rmason
https://redditblog.com/2020/06/10/reddit-welcomes-michael-seibel-to-board-of-directors/
======
mindfulplay
A dumb but serious question: what powers does a board of directors have? In
terms of day to day operations, engineering, product, marketing and so on?

~~~
gerdesj
Bear in mind that not all companies are quite as big as this lot. I don't know
the actual stats for any country but I think that small companies are quite
important in terms of additive scale. In general your small company has a
nasty habit of hiring people, abiding by the rules and paying taxes.

So, I happen to be a Managing Director of a small company (UK) - we have 20
odd employees and a t/o of ~£1.5M. We are a private company, not public (more
later.) We as a board have simple duties, largely decided by ourselves. We
also have responsibilities that are dictated by the country: we have to file
accounts on time to a proscribed format, pay corporation tax regularly, pay
VAT returns on a regular basis etc. We also have to have a certain structure
(two directors minimum) and hold regular meetings such as the AGM. There's a
few other requirements but in general you do it how you like.

We also have shareholders who are not directors. These are employees who have
served long enough (>four or so years is the general rule.) These are Class B
shareholders (Me and the other directors are Class A). The difference is Class
A stakeholders can vote on stuff - ie run the company and Class B can benefit
from company profits but don't get to run my company.

Just to be clear: me and my partners (2) run the company but quite a few
people get to benefit via shareholdings. If the shit hits the fan, me and my
partners get to be kicked in the bollocks, shareholders only get tickled.

Oooh, SARS-CoV-2: We'll be fine for a while longer.

~~~
dessant
> shareholders only get tickled

So, how can we become shareholders of your company?

~~~
varjag
Get employed in their company, and after certain seniority and performance
you'll possibly be able to negotiate share ownership.

~~~
gerdesj
Quite. We will never set the world on fire. No one is likely to become a
millionaire but we all sleep at night and earn enough to be comfortable.

------
tmpz22
I struggle to see any successful path for reddit that doesn’t devolve into
being more like Facebook. Godspeed to the new CEO and I look forward to
hearing their vision for the company.

~~~
ProAm
What more is there to do with reddit? All their new ideas in the last 5 years
have been poached from other social sites that did it first. It will always be
a cesspool in the same manner that twitter and facebook with always be
cesspools but that's more a reflection on society than management. They will
always be pawns in the bot game, political game and advertising/sponsorship
game because they are conduits only. Nothing good comes out of reddit that is
not put into reddit from the outside.

~~~
hnzix
_> Nothing good comes out of reddit that is not put into reddit from the
outside._

The good that comes from inside Reddit is the curation, as much as everyone
likes to complain about it.

They have become more proactive about banning hate and grief subreddits and
have a system for reporting and shadowbanning bad faith individuals. If
anything one could argue they come down a little too hard on borderline
controversial subs but it's such a tough line to walk.

~~~
bigiain
"Curation"?

By five totally unaccountable mods, all pushing brands for money?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/pointing_out_how_much_power_few_people_have_gets/)

That curation is "The good that comes from inside Reddit"???

~~~
andrewzah
Dramatics aside, the best subreddits tend to be the ones that are strongly
curated. /r/AskHistorians, /r/neutralpolitics, etc.

~~~
dorkinspace
The reason those subs are some of the best is not just because they are
strongly curated, but also because they are fairly curated based on well
defined, sensible rules.

The unaccountable, power-abusing moderators that are being discussed in this
thread remove posts and ban users completely arbitrarily. If these mods had a
rule system like r/AskHistorians and applied them as fairly, there wouldn't be
nearly as much concern over the issue.

------
stevewillows
This could also be an excellent move if they're planning to expand RPAN into a
proper streaming platform. There's definitely potential for it.

~~~
bigiain
Right. With Twitch just having given in to copyright trolls and deplatformed
all the DJs with multiple strikes against 2-3 year old content and no tools
for the Twitch users to practically deal with the new punishments in a timely
enough fashion to not get auto-permabanned? I cannot see "a proper streaming
platform" happening under his watch. :sigh:

~~~
tmpz22
Not sure why you're being downvotted. Twitch is going through a DRM crisis
right now that may make other comparable products impossible to build for
other companies.

------
jstgord
Dear Reddit, for the love of Mike .. PLEASE treat reddit as a web-first
platform.

You are killing the golden goose by trying to force people toward the app - by
gradually removing features and usability from the mobile web site and
constantly reminding people they "should" use the app.

I don't want reddit as an 'app', I want reddit to be readable/scrollable on
mobile and web without any form of coercion.

~~~
hazz99
I don't think they're killing it. Anecdotally, all my friends prefer the app
and the redesign to the old web client.

I suspect this anecdata is supported by Reddit's metrics, otherwise they
wouldn't be pushing so hard for it (barring some other long term goal)

Not that I like the changes. I much prefer the old version.

~~~
fossuser
They're so hostile to their own users I'm not sure they get accurate results
from their metrics.

\- They change you back to the new design every few days.

\- They constantly tell you to use the app (thankfully you can disable this at
least).

\- The old reddit design has a sidebar with helpful content, but this is not
automatically present in the redesign. If you're a mod you have to manually
copy that content over to the redesign and keep both updated separately. A lot
of mods don't seem to know this so some communities just don't have their
community information in the redesign.

\- The new redesign on mobile web is so bad that those that don't know about
how to get the old design will probably use the app to get something that
works.

I'm glad old.reddit still exists, but I think if they just scrapped the entire
new site it would be a better product. Probably worse for 'engagement' though
because without infinite scroll, gifs loading everywhere, and other addictive
hacks, people would just read what they wanted to and leave. The horror.

(Also r/hnblogs traffic has most people using the old design, but there's an
obvious selection bias in that community.)

~~~
screye
> new redesign on mobile web is so bad

The funniest part is plenty of 3rd party apps had been doing an amazing job
already. All reedit had to do was acquire one of them on the cheap or steal
design cues from the ones that were most popular.

Instead they created this monstrosity which till date lags behind many 3rd
party apps in features and fluidity.

> old.reddit

RES is the only way to use reddit, and they can pry it from my cold dead
hands.

~~~
ihuman
> All reedit had to do was acquire one of them on the cheap or steal design
> cues from the ones that were most popular.

They already tried this with Alien Blue

~~~
sudosysgen
Why didn't they keep it?

------
bluedino
Posing the question to gain more familiarity with African-Americans in tech:
who were the other candidates for this position?

~~~
russellendicott
There was a reddit announcement the other day that stated /u/kn0thing was
stepping down from the board and requested that a black person fill his place.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/gxas21/upcom...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/gxas21/upcoming_changes_to_our_content_policy_our_board/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)

~~~
PHGamer
are boards not considered employees. feel like this would violate labor laws.

~~~
robbintt
They are not.

------
seesawtron
Is this related to resignation of one of the co-founders in the last week who
said among other things "...I urge my position to be filled by a man of color"
or is this an unrelated story? Just want to understand that context.

~~~
jl2718
He seemed like the obvious choice, so, seems like a jerk move to blast out a
virtue signal for yourself at his expense.

------
minimaxir
Canonical source: [https://redditblog.com/2020/06/10/reddit-welcomes-michael-
se...](https://redditblog.com/2020/06/10/reddit-welcomes-michael-seibel-to-
board-of-directors/)

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll change to that from [https://angel.co/today/stories/reddit-names-y-
combinator-ceo...](https://angel.co/today/stories/reddit-names-y-combinator-
ceo-michael-seibel-as-alexis-ohanian-s-replacement-23521). Normally we don't
move in the direction of corporate press releases, but in this case the
original article has so little information that we might as well.

Also, the other article's title ("Reddit names Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel
as Alexis Ohanian's replacement") seemed to be leading to all manner of
misunderstandings in the comments, such as Michael becoming Reddit's CEO, or
Reddit taking over HN.

------
newsbinator
I was interested in comparing to what the previous welcome blog post was like:

> Reddit Welcomes Porter Gale to Board of Directors > May 28, 2019

[https://redditblog.com/2019/05/28/reddit-welcomes-porter-
gal...](https://redditblog.com/2019/05/28/reddit-welcomes-porter-gale-to-
board-of-directors/)

~~~
globular-toast
Interesting. Thank you.

------
leesec
Please get rid of the flow where it shows me other threads when I click on the
comments of a current thread. I'm never going to switch to a new thread from
the comments. I just want to read the comments.

~~~
apatters
Why don't we just tell it like it is? The majority of comments here reflect
the fact that Reddit is a garbage site run by a garbage company. Used to be
great, more garbage every day. They leverage network effect to abuse their
users and to suck. I look forward to the day they fail and the free market
replaces them.

~~~
MrJagil
I have quite an intricate system build up to get the most quality out of
reddit as poossible —it’s still quite bad, but it’s better. I have been
thinking of making a blog post or soemthing about it.

\- I have a multireddit with select magic the gathering subs

\- I have a multireddit with select tech subs

\- I have a multireddit with general high quality subs

\- My “all” feed has HUNDREDS of subs filtered off. This is a life long
excersice. Whenever I see a meme on “all”, i filter that sub away.

I have customized FB as well, removing every CS element on the site except the
shortcuts list for groups on the left, where I can acess a few important
groups.

My main problem is Twitter now. Why the fuck is every american news in the
form of a tweet? The site is awful to use, and I really don’t want anothet
SoMe account.

~~~
MultusSalus
Depending on what exactly you want, nitter.net is a fairly good twitter
client, although you need to use an rss reader to follow particular accounts.

~~~
MrJagil
wow, thanks.

EDIT: here are ways to automate
[https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Extensions](https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Extensions)

------
troughway
There is now a triangle between YC, Reddit and China via Tencent's $150M
Series D investment in Reddit.

I wonder which YC startups form this triangle. Certainly having the CEO is a
kind of a big deal.

------
henryfjordan
Why stick to the insular Silicon Valley club and not get someone who's devoted
their life to civil rights? There are a ton of community activists who could
actually bring a fresh perspective.

EDIT: I do not mean to question his particular qualifications or his
commitment to change, only to comment on the fact that it could have been
someone from a different walk of life. Tech leadership in Silicon Valley does
not appear inclined to affect change.

~~~
whatshisface
Presumably the duties of a Silicon Valley board member would center on running
a Silicon Valley company, which a Silicon Valley CEO would be uniquely
qualified to do.

~~~
henryfjordan
This is exactly my point. They brought someone in who presumably is going to
see Monthly Active Users as the metric to live or die by when what the world
needs from Reddit/Twitter/FB is a more social-good focus. It might be worth it
to shed a few users and lose a few ad dollars to make positive change on their
platforms but with a Silicon Valley CEO on the board that is unlikely to
happen.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Let me know when you figure out how to build a social network that can profit
from social good.

These days, profit and social good are rarely aligned.

~~~
zaksoup
This reads to me as a stunning indictment of social networks and profit more
than it does a defense of Reddit's board choice and their potential
motivations.

~~~
bigiain
> This reads to me as a stunning indictment of social networks

Or more generally, going back to the grandparent post here, this reads to me
as a stunning indictment of Silicon Valley...

------
seibelj
Great success for all of us seibel's out there! There are dozens of us!

------
johnxie
Congratulations Michael!

------
joshuakelly
Good luck mwseibel!

------
erulabs
Congrats Michael!

------
LyndsySimon
Serious question - since Ohanian has publicly stated that he urged the board
to replace him with black candidate, is there a possibility that could face an
EEOC charge?

Perhaps this doesn’t apply, as there may not be “applicants” depending upon
how their bylaws are set up - without applicants I’m not sure who would have
standing.

~~~
adewinter
Just because Ohanian asked doesn't mean they had to do it. One can therefore
conclude that they still chose a suitable candidate and would have chosen a
differently colored candidate could they not find a suitable black candidate.

~~~
Digory
Reddit publicly committed to selecting a director based on race.[0]

Hiring and firing in the US based on race is typically unlawful, even if the
candidate is qualified. You can’t use race as a qualification.

It’s a challenge to the laws, and I assume Reddit(or Conde Nast) wants to
raise it.

[https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12337775)

~~~
whymauri
Perhaps I am naive, but I'm going to guess that whoever Reddit's counsel is
was briefly cleared on this.

~~~
Digory
Absolutely. It’s a bet. Heads, it works. Tails, Condé Nast becomes known for
litigation against the Trump DOJ, fighting against systemic racism.

For the lawyers, it beats mopping up Bon Appetit’s editor in brownface.

~~~
zobzu
So requiring to pay for a position only for a specific skin color is not
actual systemic racism, as long as color is not white, because white people
are racists and this fights against that, or am I completely missing the mark?

I'm sure people here are also well versed in silicon valley HR hiring
practices regarding skin color based quotas.

~~~
screye
I think OP's point has to do with the perceived value of their moral signaling
vs the actual morals themselves.

It is a win-win for Reddit in terms of perception, whether they have to fight
a case because of it or not. If anything, this would be an 'any publicity is
good publicity' situation.

Now if it is actually inline with a truly moral stance...who cares. In this
system there are only 3 morals. Money, money and more money.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I was explicitly not taking a position on the action itself. I’m honestly
interested to see how this might open a company to litigation.

~~~
Digory
1\. A director looks more like an employee post-AB5, so it could be employment
discrimination in California.

2\. Independent contractors are protected against some race-based mistreatment
in California.

3\. The Unruh Act prohibits California businesses from race discrimination in
offering “advantages” and “privileges” to non employees.

4\. The next employee fired will have a much better case that their employment
was terminated based on race — as Reddit openly does make decisions based on
race.

Granted, there are responses to all of these. Maybe even constitutional
defenses. Maybe they’ll argue some other state’s laws apply, but all US states
have pretty broad non discrimination laws — for a reason.

~~~
jedberg
Section 2750.3 of the California Labor Code was added by AB5, and specifically
excludes board members as employees.

~~~
Digory
Like many things around AB5, that's not straightforward. They'd have to
severely limit his actual involvement to avoid employee status.

[https://www.natlawreview.com/article/do-directors-avoid-
empl...](https://www.natlawreview.com/article/do-directors-avoid-employee-
status-under-ab-5)

~~~
jedberg
A director of the company will easily pass the ABC test anyway. Especially
given that he's a director at lots of other companies and has an existing full
time job.

------
nisuni
I am sorry for him. I know as a fact that he’s brilliant and fully deserves
the position, but given the circumstances (Ohanian resigning and calling for
someone black to replace him) he will always have to live with people having
the reasonable doubt that he didn’t arrive there for merit alone.

~~~
obilgic
You could say that to any "first X to become/do Y"

~~~
casefields
Obama? How would that even work? Bush saying hey guys, I believe we should...

He got there on merit.

------
scythe
I'm surprised anyone agrees to be CEO of Reddit these days. No matter who
holds the position, they always end up being vilified by both Reddit's users
and its detractors.

~~~
dang
Board member, not CEO. The previous title seems to have created some
confusions
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483666)).

------
rectang
Ohanian's polite request was worthless. Asking nicely for change doesn't work.
Victories must be be seized, then held tenaciously at great effort and cost.

~~~
neonate
He got just what he asked for, so maybe this example doesn't work for you?

------
throwawaypop
Being a republican, I'm scared of the leadership choices social platforms are
making. Michael Seibel is a pro-Democrat and anti republican and anti-Trump.

For god sake, allow reddit to have free-speech and don't censor the voices of
"silent majority" in the USA.

P.S 60M American citizens voted for Trump.

~~~
nexuist
I don't see why Republicans can't just use another platform like gab or voat
if they think reddit has become hostile to them. Reddit being a private
company has every right to control what ideologies are promoted on their pages
just as you have every right to start your own reddit clone and moderate it
however you feel.

There's even an open source core with which to start from:
[https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit](https://github.com/reddit-
archive/reddit)

~~~
qball
Payment processing and hosting aren't treated like phone companies; they're
allowed to be discriminatory in who they do business with.

Is there a valid reason for that? No. Is the end result of there being no law
forcing financial and manufacturers of modern printing presses like those to
do business with everyone a threat to the First Amendment? Absolutely, and I'd
argue the state has a compelling interest here to force them.

Until that changes, "just build your own platform" isn't helpful.

~~~
nexuist
You don't have to use a hosting service; you can purchase servers by yourself
and run your own datacenter without ever involving a third party.

Payment processors are not required; you can accept physical checks or digital
currency such as Bitcoin without involving a third party processor. A bank
isn't allowed to close your account unless you do something illegal, so aren't
you safe there?

Modern day conveniences like AWS and Stripe are just that - conveniences. You
can do what they do on your own. If you manage to find enough paying
customers, then there is nothing stopping you from becoming your own
manufacturer or payment processor. If you cannot find enough paying customers
(in the form of subscriptions or donations), then arguably there is no reason
for you to exist anyways.

~~~
TA0X6
Not sure what part of "payment processors can discriminate" you don't
understand. Even if you purchased your own hardware, your ISP, the payment
processor you use to pay your ISP, your registrar, the payment processor you
use to pay your registrar, etc. are not neutral entities. That makes "host
your own" meaningless.

~~~
nexuist
The payment processor I use to pay my ISP and registrar like...my bank
account?

To date I have never heard of anyone having their Internet cut off because
their ISP did not like their political views. I am pretty sure neonazis are
welcome to use all ISPs, from Comcast to Cox.

~~~
TA0X6
>The payment processor I use to pay my ISP and registrar like...my bank
account?

Even if it's your bank account, you're still using a payment processor. Even
if that's your bank, they can also decide not to do business with you.

>To date I have never heard of anyone having their Internet cut off because
their ISP did not like their political views. I am pretty sure neonazis are
welcome to use all ISPs, from Comcast to Cox.

Google what happened to Stormfront. Not that I agree with their views, but
their ISPs, registrars, etc. told them to pound sand.

~~~
nexuist
What happened to Stormfront was due to them being involved in egging on mass
shootings. You are free to say whatever you want but you cannot incite
violence. Is that not the system working? They were not banned for being
racists; they were banned for being killers.

~~~
TA0X6
>What happened to Stormfront was due to them being involved in egging on mass
shootings. You are free to say whatever you want but you cannot incite
violence.

Promotion of hatred is not egging on mass shootings. Inciting violence is
indeed illegal, but they were not taken offline due to that.

>They were not banned for being racists; they were banned for being killers.

Incorrect. They were not taken offline due to a order/warrant/etc. They were
taken offline because it was politically expedient for their services
providers to.

------
fortran77
To be fair to Reddit, they've had non-white people on the board before. Like
Ellen Pao (who drove me off the platform).

------
hourislate
This seems like a demotion. Nothing to celebrate. Reddit is cesspool of bots,
disinformation. I find 4chan more civil and interesting.

This gentleman would have been better off turning them down.

~~~
dang
Come now. Reddit is Reddit. This reminds me of Paul McCartney's response to
people who don't like the White Album. "It's the Beatles fucking White Album".

------
anewdirection
Who cares. They lost me when they made the site unuseable. Do people actully
suffer through that abusive UI?

------
throwawaysea
Please influence the board to stop caving into censorship and let Reddit
return to its free thinking roots. As ever expansive “hate speech” policies
take root, the website is being co-opted to reflect just one worldview - that
of the progressive left. This is dangerous and unwelcoming.

~~~
piva00
It would be great if conservative and progressive right wing could help to not
let those communities devolve into prejudice, racism and eugenics. It is a
problem when an ideology attracts the worst in human kind, as much as I hate
the authoritarian left.

~~~
SkyBelow
This is assuming it actually attracts those views instead of attracting false
flags of those views.

One subreddit I've seen which seems to allow decent political discussion
regardless of side has come under attack because they don't censor certain
positions. The attacks are done by very blatant new accounts spamming
extremely offensive content in an attempt to get the sub flagged. I've had the
displeasure of encountering such posts on multiple occasions before mods were
able to remove them. It would not be difficult for those posting such content
to determine what is the most offensive thing that won't be removed and then
focus on posting that content until either mods have to start censoring it or
the subreddit becomes overran with that specific content. In the former case
they just repeat until they are happy with the new standards on what are
allowed. In the latter case the reputation changes and begins to attract
people who are primarily interested in the flooding content, effectively
ending the sub as being a place of open discussion. The mods are handling it
for now, but that is likely to only be for as long as the flood of the
targeted attack doesn't overwhelm them.

