Category: Social Networking

I recently blogged about the problems at Reddit : Reddit – The Front Page Of The Internet, Bottom Of The Class For Community Relations. In that post I talked of the failures of Reddit management to engage with the community.

The furore over the direction Reddit was heading had already seen a petition created that called for the head of Ellen Pao. In the wake of the communication debacle the number of signatures on that petition ballooned from around 10,000 to over 200,000.

However, it was quite clear that Ellen Pao, who only took over as Reddit CEO on a temporary basis eight months ago, was not solely to blame for Reddit’s communication issues. The anger fired in Ellen Pao’s direction was misdirected. A communication breakdown such as the one Reddit faced was not due to events in the last eight months.

Ellen’s resignation letter, posted on Reddit, contains a human touch that far too many people on social media and even in virtual worlds, seem to forget about :

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.

This doesn’t just apply to Reddit. I’ve seen similar sentiments made when people are attacking Linden Lab, or attacking people on Twitter, or in below the line comments sections. I’m not sure why people are so quick to spread bile when we communicate by text. I do hope that one of the side effects of a more immersive virtual reality future is that we will get more clues from facial expressions and that we will then see less venom when people communicate at distance.

Ellen also pointed out how support can be inspiring :

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.

The reason Ellen is stepping down though is not because of a petition and fortunately, it’s also not because of trolling and abuse either.

Continue reading “Ellen Pao Steps Down As Reddit CEO With Dignity And Humanity”

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.

Continue reading “Reddit – The Front Page Of The Internet, Bottom Of The Class For Community Relations”