​Reddit CEO Apologizes, But Internal Feud Shows No Signs of Cooling Down

The conflict between Reddit's management and user community keeps getting more complicated and contentious.

Today, CEO Ellen Pao issued a public apology to redditors, admitting fault in insufficient communication between Reddit management and the site's millions of users, especially its moderators. Pao promised to help improve site tools to make mods' jobs easier, as well as appointing community manager Kristine Fasnacht (/u/krispykrackers) to serve in the new role of moderator advocate. The moderator advocate position is designed to help open up the lines of communication between the site's paid employees and the many volunteers who help create and curate the site's content.

Both promised changes, especially improved moderator tools, are things moderators and other power users have requested for years. (By most accounts, it sounds like being one of the volunteer moderators powering one of the web's largest websites is a huge pain in the ass.) Still, it seems some of the site's users are not happy with the apology.

"Here's my thing: no one communicated," reads the current top comment on Pao's apology post. "You all went to media outlets and did interviews and made this event into a press junket before this apology."

Late last week, the sudden dismissal of popular Reddit employee Victoria Taylor pissed off a lot of Reddit's mods and active users. Not only was Taylor well-liked, but she served an important role as talent liaison for the site's ultra-popular Ask Me Anything subreddit. The site's management failed to plan for the fallout after Taylor was let go, leaving the AMA subreddit and its moderators in the lurch. Many other popular subreddits went private as a form of protest.

Site founder Alexis Ohanian explained that Taylor's dismissal was part of a sitewide shift in attitude towards the /r/IAmA subreddit, and how it's become part of the marketing package for many media figures hawking a new film or TV show. "We're phasing out our role being in-between interesting people and the reddit audience so that we can focus on helping remarkable people become redditors, not just stop by on a press tour," he said. It's possible Taylor was dismissed because her role was going to become obsolete—neither side has commented on the matter, as is standard practice—but it's clear that no plan was put into place for the AMAs already scheduled.

In her apology, Pao admits that the administration should have handled this better, saying, "We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years. We haven't communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes…The mods and the community have lost trust in me and in us, the administrators of reddit."

Pao also clarified a quote she offered the New York Times calling her detractors a "vocal minority," saying her words are being misinterpreted and that she was referring to the faction of Redditors who attack her with racist, misogynist, and hyperbolic language, not the Redditors who have well-reasoned issues with the way the site is being run.

Despite these concessions, many site users are hesitant to accept Pao's statements before they see any real changes made. If this divide is going to be breached anytime soon, it's going to take a lot of effort on the part of site administration.