After a chaotic week, in which a major part of Reddit’s site shut down, to protest the removal of communications director Victoria Taylor, and a petition calling for CEO Ellen Pao to step down (which garnered more than 200,000 signatures), the site announced Friday that she was resigning from her post. She will, however, stay on as advisor till the end of the year.
A report on Mashable stated that Co-founder Steve Huffman will now return to the community. The site’s Y-Combinator executive Sam Altman thanked Pao because she “brought focus to chaos.” He also announced that co-founder Alexis Ohanian will return to the company as a ‘co-founder’.
Pao’s post
Ellen Pao
She also mentioned how she felt overwhelmed by the bitterness spewed on her by the users, and thanked those who extended support. “In my eight months as Reddit’s CEO, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on reddit,” Pao wrote. “The good has been off-the-wall inspiring, and the ugly made me doubt humanity,” she said, according to the article on Mashable.
Sam says
Sam Altman pointed out that Huffman would probably push Reddit onto smartphones. “I’m particularly happy that Steve is so passionate about mobile. I’m very excited to use reddit more on my phone,” he wrote.
In his post, he didn’t spare the blatant misogyny that would often follow Pao’s post. “As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen,” wrote Altman. “The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people, even if there is Internet between you. If the reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website but it will never be a truly great community.”
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