Reddit – The Front Page Of The Internet, Bottom Of The Class For Community Relations

r/SecondLife looks the same as it ever was over on Reddit, but a lot of other subreddits have gone dark in a protest over the management of the site. Reddit, which turned ten in June, have upset many of their numerous users after allegedly firing the very popular Victoria Taylor. According to The Guardian article I just linked to, Reddit users are revolting over this development :

The protest is focused on the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, a former Reddit communications director who was abruptly let go on Thursday. Her role had been to co-ordinate the site’s popular Ask Me Anything series, also known as AMAs, where celebrities answer questions submitted by the Reddit community. The main AMA subforum, “IAmA”, was the first to close in protest.

Over the years, AMAs had brought in some of the site’s biggest successes, including the AMA with President Obama in 2012, and one with a man with two penises in 2014, and many had been specifically arranged and co-ordinated by Taylor. The contrast between those two events is also a nice way to sum up Reddit to someone who has not heard of the site.

Many mods are now annoyed that Reddit don’t seem to have grasped how important a role Victoria Taylor played in communications between mods and guests. They feel let down and it seems on the face of it, that the management of Reddit don’t quite grasp how much mods on subreddits appreciated Victoria Taylor, in short the mods feel they’ve been left high and dry with no forward thinking plans in place to replace Victoria Taylor.

Now there are some golden rules when your users are upset, somewhere very close to the top of the list is “Thou Shalt Not Piss Them Off Further,“, however this golden rule seems to have flown right over the head of some of the senior people at Reddit.

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder and executive chair at Reddit, responded to angry users by saying “Popcorn tastes good.” This tongue in cheek reference to internet drama backfired badly, indeed it pretty much became explosive Popcorn. He has since amended his post, it now reads :

Popcorn tastes good.
Edit: Honestly, I didn’t understand the depth of the frustration, and I really regret this comment. I’m leaving it here as a reminder not to do it again.

He deserves some credit for acknowledging that he misjudged the mood, but it’s really more of a refelction of how out of touch Reddit are with their community.

Later on, Alexis Ohanian posted :

We don’t talk about specific employees, but I do want you to know that I’m here to triage AMA requests in the interim. All AMA inquiries go to AMA@reddit.com where we have a team in place.

I posted this on [a mod sub] but I’m reposting here:

We get that losing Victoria has a significant impact on the way you manage your community. 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.

We’re prepared to help coordinate and schedule AMAs. I’ve got the inbound coming through my inbox right now and many of the people who come on to do AMAs are excited to do them without assistance (most recently, the noteworthy Channing Tatum AMA).

This should have been the opening response, not the much later response. The response also does not seem to have calmed down the fears of Reddit moderators. r/IAMA was one of the subreddits that joined the protest by going private, they have now removed the blackout. but in their Welcome Back message, they don’t sound convinced about Reddit’s ability to provide them with the support they need. Part of the opening post reads :

We have taken the day to try to understand how Reddit will seek to replace Victoria, and have unfortunately come to the conclusion that they do not have a plan that we can put our trust in. The admins have refused to provide essential information about arranging and scheduling AMAs with their new ‘team.’ This does not bode well for future communication between us, and we cannot be sure that everything is being arranged honestly and in accordance with our rules. The information we have requested is essential to ensure that money is not changing hands at any point in the procedure which is necessary for /r/IAmA to remain equal and egalitarian. As a result, we will no longer be working with the admins to put together AMAs.

This is what happens when you treat your users with contempt, trust quickly gets eroded.

There is a myth about sites such as Reddit being free. Reddit is not free, the moderators carry out work that other companies pay people for. Users help to create even more content, in exchange for this, Reddit provide them with space which allows Reddit to follow a business plan. Whereas money may not be changing hands, there is an exchange of some value taking place.

Reddit’s management and Admins need to act in a far more professional manner. Amateur hour was over long ago, as I said earlier, Reddit are ten years old, it’s long past the point where they should be treating their users with respect.

There’s very little point in being The Front Page Of The Internet, if you’re bottom of the class in community relations.