We apologize

BassheadPanda · 11時間前

How do you feel about this comment by /u/CaptainObviousMC.

The thing is... She's absolutely right, I 100% don't care at all about this situation, reddit, or the moderators. I'm a pretty apathetic content sponge.

That fact is deadly dangerous to reddit, because the moment the content creators jump ship, I'll follow them like the fair weather fan I am, because I don't care -- at all -- where I get my content, or about which corporation or moderators are involved. If reddit compromises its content stream by having moderators jump ship, I'm out too, not because I care, but because I don't.

So she's right -- most reddit users absolutely don't care a bit about this, or the site, or really anything. And that's why she can't afford to piss off the moderators, who are the people who do care.

What's hilarious is that the reddit administration seems unable to see that most people not caring is precisely what makes the moderators caring so dangerous: they're wielding my caring by proxy, because they hold the keys to content.

Edit: If you're going to gild this comment, just give it /u/CaptainObviousMC instead.

Sunhammer · 9時間前

Communication: u/krispykrackers [3] is trying out the new role of Moderator Advocate. She will be the contact for moderators with reddit and will help figure out the best way to talk more often. We’re also going to figure out the best way for more administrators, including myself, to talk more often with the whole community.

....So you all picked the admin most legendarily nasty to moderators and users for this

uuuuhh

slickdealsceo · 9時間前

This will probably be buried in the depths of this thread, but as someone who is a steward and community advocate at Slickdeals, I thought I might be able to relay some of the insight we've garnered as we've built our community.

I was one of the original founders, former CEO, and now the Chief Product Officer and as such I've had the opportunity to put a lot of process in place, as well as help ask the right questions whenever we do things. Naturally all communities have their nuances and differences, but in the end it boils down to respect. Respect the community: honor your users and content contributors for the work and effort they do.

Often this results in us taking a tradeoff in what we call "Technical Debt vs Community Debt" where instead of creating friction for our users, we take on a technical burden instead. For instance, we launched a redesign recently, and instead of forcing everyone over, we maintained a classic version of the website, and told ourselves that we would maintain two versions of the site for the foreseeable future, and do our best to improve the redesigned version to the point that it compels people to switch ("lets make it so much better that they willingly switch").

We often sit down and ask ourselves the following questions, in no particular order or priority:

Is what we're doing impacting the way the community uses the website? How does it impact all the different types of users: casual users, frequent visitors, lurkers, content contributors, power users, etc.
Are you moving someone's cheese? Are you changing something that users are very used to or have been conditioned to? Is there a way to transition it smoothly?
Does it impact the way our mods use the website? How about our editors, or other internal staff?
Does it impact the way our content contributors use the website?
Does it impact the integrity, trustworthiness, or authenticity of our brand, content or community, even if its just the perception of such?
Does it impact the sense of community, their sense of ownership, pride or involvement with the website?
Are you addressing the needs of the community, especially ones that were explicitly requested? Did you make a tradeoff? If possible, can you address both your goals and the communities needs at the same time? At the very least, do not ignore what your community is asking for.
What do you anticipate the negative feedback to be like or about? How will you respond to it?
Are you releasing a "complete" product (is it finished?), if not: what is missing and why did you choose to omit things?
How are you communicating these changes or reasons to the community? Did you solicit their feedback before, during and after the change? We've learned that communication is key: frequent and open communication. Users may not always agree with us, but they are usually reasonable and will at least understand it if you explain why you need to do something. One of the best ways to manage change, in my opinion, is to solicit that feedback and actually act on it quickly. You wont make everyone happy, but the fact that you listened, considered and ultimately acted lets the community know that you're listening and working -with- them.
What is the plan immediately after the change? Who will handle interacting with the community, collecting the feedback and making action items for them? Do you have resources set aside to quickly respond to the user feedback and fix bugs or issues as quickly as possible to minimize the risk/impact to the community?

Admittedly, we're not perfect either, but we've learned over the past years that if you're willing to engage with your community, they can be pretty cooperative and understanding, so long as you actually put a good faith effort into taking their feedback, listening to their concerns and being responsive in a timely manner. And as you probably noticed, since /u/ekjp actually communicated here, the nature of the responses overall is markedly less hostile - because once you connect with someone on a personal level they become much more reasonable.

Edit: I don't deserve the gold, but thank you kind stranger! But one more thing I'll say is that the community is vocal in threads like these because they've invested into this community and they feel a part of it. View people's feedback as passionate (even if it's harsh) because they care, and because they want things to improve.

InsidiousToilet · 8時間前

Look, I honestly don't give a damn where I read the news. Reddit is convenient because it's all gathered into one nexus of information, with each specific interest having it's own little mini-dimension that I can hang out in. If you folks continue to fuck up (as has been the trend over the years), and a better, more convenient, site shows up to replace you, I have no qualms about leaving.

Also, shitty decision with krispykrackers as "Moderator Advocate". You should probably look into the history of these people on the site, to determine their level of expertise in "advocating" for anything or anyone, let alone moderators.

SingularTier · 11時間前

Hey Ellen,

Although I disagree with the direction reddit HQ is taking with the website, I understand that monetizing a platform such as reddit can be a daunting task. To that effect, I have some questions that I hope you will take some time to address. These represent some of the more pressing issues for me as a user.

1) Can we have a clear, objective, and enforceable definition of harassment? For example, some subs have been told that publicizing PR contacts to organize boycotts and campaigns is harassment and will get the sub banned - while others continue to do so unabated. I know /u/kn0thing touched on this subject recently, but I would like you to elaborate.

2) Why was the person who was combative and hyper-critical of Rev. Jackson shadowbanned (/u/huhaskldasdpo)? I understand he was rude and disrespectful and I would have cared less if he was banned from /r/IAMA, but could you shed some light on the reasoning for the site-wide ban?

3) What are some of the plans that reddit HQ has for monetizing the web site? Will advertisements and sponsored content be labelled as such?

4) Could you share some of your beliefs and principles that you plan on using to guide the site's future?

I believe that communication is key to reddit (as we know it) surviving its transition in to a profitable website. While I am distraught over how long it took for a site-wide announcement to come out (forcing many users to get statements from NYT/Buzzfeed/etc.), I can relate not wanting to approach a topic before people have had a chance to calm down.

The unfortunate side-effect of this is that it breeds wild speculation. Silence reinforces tinfoil. For example, every time a user post gets caught in auto-mod, someone screams censorship. The admins took no time to address the community outside of the mods of large subreddits. All we, as normal users, heard came from hearsay and cropped image leaks. The failure to understand that a large vocal subset of users are upset of Victoria's firing is a huge misstep in regaining the community's trust.

jordanlund · 10時間前

I would just like to know the thought process behind not having a backup plan following the termination of a key employee. I don't expect anyone to say why Victoria was fired, that's none of my business, but there had to be a reason why that information was not communicated to the rest of the community and certainly the AMA participants of that day.

In his statement /u/kn0thing stated that AMAs would go on as scheduled, but the fact of the matter is that the AMAs scheduled to go on that day were disrupted due to Victoria's absence and the entire kerfuffle was created when an AMA participant was not being contacted and was forced to message the mods to find out what was going on, which triggered their reaction of "We don't know, what's going on?"

You acknowledge "mistakes were made", but I'd really like to know who made the mistakes and what their rationale was at the time for doing so.

It's sad when I'm being encouraged to think that the best case scenario is merely incompetence. Did people responsible for the firing not know there were AMAs going on that day? Did they not know who the AMAs were with and as a result were not able to reach out? Why didn't they know?

These are some pretty basic questions that need to be answered and resolved if you want to re-build trust with the community.

EDIT guys... guys... /u/kn0thing is TRYING to answer my question honestly, please stop downvoting him.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/csu6y0z

Simple_Tymes · 11時間前

The average users don't care about moderator tools. What matters to the passionate non-mod reddit community is:

PAID CONTENT: Will AMA and other reddit subs have content paid by sponsors? Will you disclose if reddit receives money for specific corporate posts to receive higher placement/votes? How far are you willing to go to monetize reddit?

CENSORSHIP: Will you delete subs based on advertisers' requests? Will you ban users who don't agree with specific speech/content guidelines?

POOR MANAGEMENT: The firing of Victoria may, in fact, be completely justified. But the pure business of firing the head of AMAs (arguably Reddit's highest profile sub) was simply terrible management. Why didn't you know how your business is run? Why didn't you have a transition strategy in place for Victoria's departure? Why didn't she introduce her replacement to her important clients/mods? How is this not business 101?

TRUST: Reddit is run by the good will of unpaid moderators. How can they trust you that their content won't be regulated based on corporate sponsorship? The rumors regarding Victoria's firing over disagreement about turning AMA into a money machine must be addressed. And "we don't discuss firings" isn't good enough -- what is Reddit's plan for the future of the AMAs? And why should we trust you to continue to support a site that doesn't seem to respect your intelligence?

Simply, if these issues aren't addressed, then it's time to move somewhere else. If Reddit wants to turn the community into an advertiser platform (and do it in the most unprofessional, mismanaged way) then there's no sense in supporting a site that no longer shares our beliefs. Why should we trust you to do the right thing?

Edit: for Yishan and kn0wing:

LEADERSHIP: CEOs are the public face of a company. Good CEOs give investors and customers confidence in the company. While toxic CEOs bring companies crashing down. So what does Ellen bring to Reddit? Her previous work history is mired in controversy, as is her husband's. They've both been universally destructive of the companies they were part of, as well as exhibiting questionable morals and ethics. So what qualities or assets did Ellen bring to the table to get the job at reddit? Her hiring -- and subsequent defense by Yishan and kn0wing -- doesn't speak well to the decisions that are driving the company. What value does Pao possess that makes her, despite her personal and professional toxic qualities, a value to reddit?

INTERIM: Ellen Pao has been called an "interim ceo" though she's quoted as saying she'll leave "over her dead body." Isn't her mismanagement of AMAs and her role as the public face of the company, losing users and potentially money, cause for letting her go? Why isn't now the perfect time to end her temporary employment and find a real CEO?

FOUNDATION: Wouldn't reddit be better served as a foundation similar to wikipedia?

w00rmy · 6時間前

I notice it's "WE" when you acknowledge screw ups, but it's "I" when you try to turn negatives to positives and make yourself look better. Therefore, "I" don't believe a single word out of your mouth.

lolimse · 8時間前

You should also make a post over at /r/tifu.

cahaseler · 11時間前

Hi Ellen,

/r/IAMA mod here. First, thank you for finally making a statement about this on reddit.

Second, can you go into more detail about the direction you see for celebrity participation on Reddit in a post-Victoria age? Alexis has made some comments to us behind the scenes about your ideas to encourage celebrity participation beyond AMAs, but I'd love to have the conversation in a more public space where everyone can participate.

Binky216 · 9時間前

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and ask my questions regards to the current state of Reddit. As I see it, there are a few issues that need to be addressed publicly ans specifically. These are all based on the userbase "perceptions." Not being in any loop to the recent drama, these are all just what I'm getting based on they hype going on. I'd love your response to the following issues:

Censorship - There's a fine line between making Reddit a "safe" place and making Reddit a place where you dare not ever offend. Part of Reddit's appeal is that here is a place where you can voice your opinions and hopefully find others to discuss topics with. Currently fatpeoplehate is banned, but what if someday there's an "up in arms" issue between (as only an example) the atheist and religious subreddits. Do we start banning groups because SOMEONE might take offense to the existence of specific subreddits. When do we start banning, when do we just ignore? I don't have an answer on when it is and isn't appropriate to remove groups, but I'd think it's better to put things in the hands of the individual users / groups than censoring anything site-wide. If I don't want to see fatpeoplehate, give me tools to block it completely...
Trust - There's definitely a trust issue going on. As you've stated, the person who asked the offensive Jesse Jackson comment wasn't shadowbanned, but in fact deleted the account. Perception was that Reddit Admins could and would shadowban people who offend/bother them. This tells me that you have a trust issue with your userbase as we're starting to see the Admins as the enemy, not the great folks who give us this cool place to hang out. I'd love to know how you plan to repair the users' trust issues. My opinion here is that there should be a lot more transparency on what Admins have and haven't done with regards to bans, censorship, and frontpage manipulations.
Evil Reddit Management - There's also a perception out there that Reddit's Management (not the day-to-day Admins exactly) aren't good people. Victoria's firing has highlighted this, as have apparently other Admin firings that have come to light. I agree with your policy of not speaking to specifics about personnel issues, but Reddit and you very specifically have come across as heartless with the immediateness of these firings. The "nice" people that Reddit users tend to be really don't like the idea that Reddit might not be a great place to work and we don't want to support a place that mistreats their employees. We actually want the Admins and Users to all get along and make Reddit something special. Axing a high profile, well-liked Admin like Victoria without some sort of press release is a mistake as "we" want to make sure all her hard work and kindness to "us" wasn't just completely disregarded in this decision. In short, the Admins in general seem like nice people and we want them to make sure they're treated nicely, even when a parting of ways happens.

Those are my concerns moving forward and I'd love to see responses.

Conan3121 · 9時間前

Days after damage control interviews in mainstream media that stockholders and investment advisors read, the CEO of a beleaguered internet based company issues an official statement.

Boilerplate text bland statement, written by HR and vetted for plausible deniability by Legal.

Waits a day or two to post so the furore settles and the announcement has some clear air to reach investors.

Blames the episode on the Three Pillars Of Corporate Apology (hereafter TTPOCA) : 1. mistakes by the prior administrations 2. poor communication methods that we will now fix using trusted company insiders, and 3. slower than we hoped for IT development.

Added 2 bits of seasoning to the recipe with a folksy "we screwed up", and a followup hit back at personal attacks by a vocal minority of users.

As part of the product, I recognise a clear case of Big Company Behaving Badly Syndrome (BCBBS, abbreviation BS, variant type: quick profit and exit strategy).

JonasBrosSuck · 10時間前

so this is like a regular AMA, where real questions won't get answered? :/

Cartossin · 9時間前

This sounds very much like you're only admitting that you screwed up by not communicating your bad decisions to mods.

The real things that piss everyone off are:

Censorship. Users get shadowbanned for clearly stupid reasons. One of them was banned for replying to one of your comments. Subreddits get banned for brigading when they clearly aren't. Many could argue that fatpeoplehate didn't stop brigading, but what about all the subreddits inspired by fph that promise to ban brigading that also got banned. I see a cowardly administration with the "ban first and ask questions later" attitude.
Eliminating Victoria's position. Notice I am not complaining about the firing of Victoria herself. I agree that you can't talk about employees, but you certain can address concerns about how celebrity AMAs will happen without this position. For all we know, Victoria was fired and deserved to be. Fine, but where is her replacement?

You're apologizing for things that are secondary to our main concerns and basically saying you're going to keep making bad decisions.

BellyFullOfSwans · 10時間前

Krispykrackers is the Admin who shadowbanned my first account for posting a business' phone number and called it "doxxing".

I had a 3 year old account with over 30K karma, over 10 Redditgifts gift exchanges, months of gold given and received (with years still on the books I never got back), a large friends list, etc...banned because I posted the number of a business. I didnt start a witch hunt or say anything bad about the business....I wasnt promoting the business....still, it was seen as doxxing and without anybody else hearing my case, I was shadowbanned (and not notified about it).

When I did figure out what had happened and why I was suddenly talking to myself, I had to look up ways of getting a hold of Reddit. They dont exactly have a customer service hotline (you know, like real businesses with real customers do).

That was a pain, but was able to finally reach somebody. It was Krispykrackers. Her one word reply? "Why do you think it is OK to post personal information?"

And that was it....I never heard another word, I never got an answer back from Reddit Gold about my paid-for months of gold I still had...and /u/gekokujo was lost to me over a non-issue.

There was no accountability, no transparency, and no recourse for grievance. As a Reddit Gold user at the time, I was a PAYING CUSTOMER...and as you could have seen from my comment history then (or now), I am not a troll.

Leaving Krispykrackers in charge of fixing your out-of-control staff and unfair practices is worse than letting the fox run the henhouse. Foxes arent evil, they just eat chickens. On the other hand, humans like Krispykrackers have their own sense of social justice and a license to be judge/jury/executioner with no witnesses and only the shadowbanned-mute voices of her opposition to speak up.

There is no solution as long as Krispykrackers is playing a major part. She is as big of a part of the problem as Pao herself and I can prove that (with my own experience and that of others...some involving chat logs from past controversies).

Fix the problem....dont promote the problem to a place where she will further abuse her power and your site.

EDIT - Thanks for the comments, guys. I did get a response from KrispyKrackers that is hidden in the comments below. As thanks for her response and in the spirit of fairness, it definitely deserves to be seen. I apologize for any bad formatting, but I dont think Ive linked a comment before. Also...in the comment above it says that I had "years" remaining on my Gold. Nobody has called me on that yet, but it was just a simple typo and should read "months" instead. Going to leave it up as to not appear tricksy.

KrispyKracker's response

turtleattacks · 9時間前

Why would anyone give reddit gold to the CEO of reddit?

imh · 9時間前

Since the admin responses are getting so downvoted, can the commenters asking questions please edit their questions to include the responses? That way we can see them without having to click a bazillion "load more comments" buttons?

Muaddibisme · 8時間前

Hi Ellen,

I am certain that you realize much of the userbase (or at least enough of the userbase ) is upset enough that your words are meaningless to them. Or at least too little too late.

I don't have any direct investment in the current situation but it does effect me and all of reddit.

You and the administrative team have made several decisions starting before you came to reddit that the community has openly opposed. Yet you ignored them completely, not even addressing their legitimate concerns. Sometimes, mocking them in private (always be careful what you and your team put to ink).

This reminds me quite a bit of the windows 8 launch. No one was surprised by window 8's failure because the community had been telling Microsoft for quite some time that win8 was not what they wanted, that it was laid out in a way that they didn't want, and that it would fail if they released it. They didn't listen.

I feel that Reddit is at the same crossroads. The community has definitely been telling you how they feel and you have ignored them and in some cases mocked them. You are walking a dangerous path that will likely lead to significant brand damage at the very least.

To save what you can you need to step back from your title and salary and spend some time becoming a redditor. The community has asked you for specific items and you need to do more than post a generalized CYA message.

I realize that any changes will take time and most of reddit does as well. However, if you want the community to see your words are more than another hollow pile of crap, post your goals and how you are going to meet them, not just that you have goals. Address the specifics with specific language. Engage yourself in teh community instead of standing apart from it.

Reddit doesn't need a CEO, it needs a 'lead redditor'. Think on that for the good of us all.

Many specific items can be found in other posts in this thread and I am sure that the couple I post here are already covered but I think that starting with these is how to start.

1) End Shadowbans.

Do it today. Stop it immediately. Don't wait. If a user is to be removed from a sub or from reddit in general there needs to be a process, not teh whim of an admin.

Someone to be banned should be informed before the ban is permanent. The ban must be reviewed by another party and the person to be banned needs to be able to defend themselves.

Yes, there are people who need to be banned. Yes, admins have full control over who can do what on reddit. No, you don't owe anyone any of this. However, it only takes one wrongful ban to enrage your user base and there has already been many more than one.

The temper of an mod should never screw over a user. Put a process in place and use it.

2) Solidify rules for subs and enforce them.

The most recent of all of this is of course FPH and the fallout that ensued. I don't support FPH but it does expose a giant issue with reddit and not for the first time (merely the most recent).

If you are going to ban subs (and really posts as well) you must have a solid set of guidelines by which you judge such things and it must be applied evenly to all subs. No matter who they are or how big they are or who mods them. You simply can't have it any other way.

Either all is permitted or what is not permitted but be the same for everyone.

Again, yes reddit has the right to do whatever it wants. However, your userbase expects an even application of the rules.

3) More than words.

If you had issued an apology long ago none of this would be an issue. However, you didn't. You even went so far s to talk to others before dealing with your userbase. I saw in one of your other replies that you blamed downvoting as to why. Yet, you can make a sticky post to the front page. There really was no reason for you not to address this a couple days ago, or the FPH crap the day after it happened.

However, you didn't. Instead you allowed the pot to stew. Now your words will fall on deaf ears (eyes?) and you have already hemorrhaged users. It isn't going to destroy reddit, At least not without further blundering, but backtracking at this point will be very difficult.

You need to do more than make a couple posts.

What I suggest is that you take these threads and gather the issues the community want addressed then make a post with those items and what specific steps you will take to address them, with an expected timeline.

This will be a significant amount of work but it is back logged work whose deadline is long past.

_

I don't want to see reddit die and I don't want to see it transformed into digg or similar). You must allow your community and moderators to drive your decision, not to try to make decisions to drive your mods and community.

I truly hope that more comes of this than empty promises and CYA postings. The opportunity for you to change the communities perception is at hand but how you handle it will determine everything and so far it doesn't look favorable.

-Muad'Dib

Agentbolt · 9時間前

Sure, fine, this is a very nicely PR-crafted response. Instead of saying "we'll try harder" in one sentence, it's been done in a few paragraphs. Let's stop to consider how badly this has all been bungled up till now, this just looks good in comparison.

Ellen, I'm a pretty typical Reddit user. Fairly casual, I mostly stick to the default subs, and I'm not a foaming-at-the-mouth zealot trying to get you canned. Having said that, I'm not going to be able to stop supporting the mini-revolt going on unless a few things are addressed.

I'm not of the opinion you should have spent your weekend here placating us, but I'm still not seeing any explanation of WHY the Admins have let things get so bad here. We'd be a lot more likely to accept an answer of "We're so sorry, we'll try harder" if we knew what was different last time (from the other 245 times we've heard this)
Again, it's hard to take anything you say terribly seriously if your reaction to the petition is to stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la" as loud as you can. Almost 200,000 people have demanded you step down, you need to address why a LARGE percentage of your readership should drop this demand. Additionally, you're doing yourself no favors by insisting that by and large, the Reddit community is perfectly happy with the way things are going. Clearly, we're not.
I am not okay with people being harassed, brigaded, or abused. However, I would like to see you address the concerns that Reddit's free speech ideals will be neutered to make the site more profitable. I'm not asking for concrete details, but I'd like to know how exactly you plan to draw the line between abusive/illegal behavior, and stuff you (or other Admins) really dislike but won't prohibit on here. Just how "safe" a space do you intend to make Reddit?

thejellydude · 10時間前

Look, I'm not the most active mod of /r/funny, but I've been around for a while, and I pay attention to the backroom when things like this happen. Are you really acknowledging all the issues here? And I don't just mean mine as a mod, but those of the users. Mind explaining to me how you're going to handle:

Shadowbanning and how it negatively affects content producers in niche subreddits?

The constant lack of listening to mod requests by the admins? (I still remember how much we had to fight to let /u/Kylde moderate more than just 3 defaults. That was insane.)

Restructuring the reddit site-wide rules to be more transparent and clear?

Why you aren't working with the current modtools providers on how to integrate their product? (They've said time and again they would love for you to steal from them)

How you think Krispykrackers, working alone, will be enough for 6,000+ mods? We've already said we don't think this is going to work, and I've heard no response to this.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's hard for me to take a post like this serious when you don't address any of the issues that have been outstanding, but only the ones brought up by the recent event.

_VicBoss · 11時間前

Haha, why do people think an apology means anything in this age of digital liars? Takes a 150,000 signature change.org to get even an empty, transparent apology out of you.

the_human_porch · 9時間前

Ellen,

This makes me sad.

I am not a power user, a content creator or a person in the vocal majority. What i am is a user in the silent minority. I click ad links, stick to some default subs and my gaming sub reddits. I contributed to secret santa, bought gold on various other accounts and mostly mind my own business. I am a lurker.

But i have no information out there on whats going on besides what the vocal majority and your haters have to say because you wont tell me how you screwed up. You say it but i see no ownership of whats been happening even in the past months let alone years.

So eventually people like me who wont tell you how disappointed they are will just start to leave. I am not a mod, i am not a avid content creator. But i also got the feeling i am not important, i may be one drop in the bucket but those other drops will soon feel the same way too.

All i saw the past couple of months is a badly planned, badly thought out execution of ideas that seemed to be planned to piss off reddit. With no explanation to the silent user who will pick up a pitchfork because everyone else is.

I feel like you cheated on me, and i dont know if i can continue to trust you. We need counseling badly.

post_break · 11時間前

Is this the type of communication we can expect from miss krispy?

RedditAckount · 10時間前

This is a simulated discussion.

The damage is done, the community is now weary. Monetize, make your money, and move on to the next "Reddit" style website. If money is your goal (and it is) then just do it and don't pretend to care long enough just to pander to your sites users, the ones who actually are responsible for the creation and submission of the content of your site.

Many of us are already done. Moving on. In 5 years, the future of reddit will be nothing but astroturfers, clickbait articles, the exact same wikipedia links posted to til, and premium memberships.

We can't trust you not to dismantle, edit, delete, or hide content that we deem to share. We'll find another outlet, another 4chan, another reddit, another anonymous board. Communities will always find a way to come together. Your model was good, but your goals have changed.

You've lost our trust. You've lost our input. You're on your own.

Vogeltanz · 10時間前

I've been a reddit user for about three years now. I do moderate a sub, but it's very simple, and I've never had any troubles on that front.

But here's my perspective:

Ms. Pao is the lightning rod of the current upset within the community. Yet by apologizing for "the past several years" of mistakes, she is impliedly shifting blame from herself onto Reddit's prior leadership. In particular former CEO Yishan Wong.

Three or four posts on my daily feed is now controversy-related. That's not good, and I don't enjoy it. I suspect others don't as well. Media outlets are reporting the controversy, which signals to me that the unrest has at least several days if not a week or two left before it fans out.

None of us knows what's really happening internally at Reddit right now. Maybe Ms. Pao has already increased revenue 100% since her arrival. If so, who am I to say that she isn't the best candidate to become full-fledged CEO.

But then again her arrival seems to have brought multiple controversies and user dissatisfaction.

If Ms. Pao's internal leadership isn't top notch, it would be hard for me (as a hypothetical board member) to justify her current role given the recent unrest and failure to control the public-facing situation.

I'm even more troubled that her allocution is apologizing for past mistakes before her arrival -- essentially refusing to take responsibility for the current situation.

So, I'd put the question to Ms. Pao bluntly: why should you continue to serve as Reddit CEO?

FunkyFarmington · 9時間前

Reddit has gone corporate. Your goals are now at odds with the reason we all come here. Everything you say now sounds contrived, and you (clearly) lack the PR skills to change that. The way to change it was to not have done this in the first place.

Here's to waiting for the next Reddit. The cycle will complete soon.

xwm · 10時間前

This reads very much like a "This is turning out to be way worse than we thought, how can we string them along while we slap something together last minute to appease them."

The last few weeks has shown precisely what the admins/glorious leader feel towards users: condescension. This play doesn't read any different.

Elle-Elle · 10時間前

In 2010, I won the Reddit pumpkin carving contest with my Doc Brown pumpkin from my now deleted account /u/ooolalalauren

I was supposed to win a t-shirt. The mods of the contest assured that I would get it. I never did. They told me that /u/alienth was the admin in charge of getting that to me. I contacted him. Never got a response.

So, I don't care about Victoria or any of this. I'm just butthurt that I didn't get my shirt. That's the real issue here.

EDIT: Getting my shirt!! Thank you, /u/kn0thing! Lolol I can't believe it.

FOUND! My Doc Brown Pumpkin

and

u/driftw00d found the original thread! He recognized my pumpkin because he was one of the other winners who didn't receive shirts!

Oh my God, people. I posted this with no intention of upvotes, replies, and definitely not a t-shirt. It's been five years. I posted this as a light-hearted comment in contrast to the serious and dramatic replies to Ellen's apology. I just wanted to make someone smile amongst the drama.

ucantsimee · 11時間前

You've been promising mod tools for longer than I care to remember and they are still "coming soon." At this point your word alone means nothing. Actions will be the way to make it up to the community. Not words. Get to work.

kethryvis · 4時間前

This'll get buried, but hey. May as well add to the pile. Not that anyone is going to read this low.

I wrote my master's thesis on online communities, and specifically on the communication (or lack of) between online communities and the companies that run the sites they gather on. I focused on LiveJournal, which a lot of us remember for having a lot of user insurrections much like what we're seeing here.

As I wrote, I made a brief article that I titled "Top 9 things to never do to your online community." These were brief takeaways, things I noticed being repeated over and over again (as an anthropologist, I tend to look for patterns). Reddit broke SO MANY of these in this instance. In fact.. pretty much all of them.

1. Don't bury the lead.

You took this action on a Thursday, right before a long weekend, and as far as anyone can tell, didn't announce it anywhere. The more you try to hide something, the more a community will dig and dig and dig to find out what happened. And when you do it on a holiday, you've just given them prime time to do so. What do we do on our weekends but sit on your site and create content?

2. Don't talk down to them.

Several of the responses from Reddit admins sounded fairly patronizing. Don't do that. Treat your users how you want them to treat you. And remember... we can smell bullshit in a statement like a fart in a car. Don't make flowery promises. This statement isn't overly flowery.. but there's some stuff in there making my whiff detector go off. Be careful here.

3. Don't underestimate your community.

This sort of goes with #1. Don't think that they won't notice when something happens, don't think they won't get upset when a wildly popular member of your staff is fired without warning or reason. Don't think they'll just sit on their hands going "well. that's a bummer." If 15 years of online communities have taught me anything, it's that they don't sit on their hands.

4. Don't ignore your community and its opinions.

Mods had a really hard time getting answers. Considering they do the bulk of the work on your site, that's a really bad move.

5. Don't just give them lip service.

This post is better than most "we fucked up" posts i've seen, you've given two concrete things that are already in place, and another that is promised, but could still be vaporware. You're "committed to talking more often with the community" but you don't say how that's going to happen. And your own site makes this difficult; anything you say is going to be downvoted, which means no one will see it. That's a recipe for disaster right there.

6. Don't keep things from them.

We understand that you can't go into details on why Victoria was let go. Personnel issues are highly confidential, and pretty much everyone gets that. But finding a way to address what happened and give answers while still preserving confidentiality. It's hard. But I have to think you're all fairly smart people and can figure out how to make that happen. Or at least get out in front of it before everyone throws a fit. Then YOU control the story, and aren't scrambling to respond.

7. Don't believe you're the center of your user's world.

Sure you're a big part of a lot of people's lives, but you're not the only place. If people get pissed off at you, they're not just going to keep it here. They're going to go to all the other places online they hang out and bitch. i saw stories on reddit, on Twitter, on Facebook, Tumblr... everywhere people hang out online, people were talking about the #RedditRevolt. That takes a minor kerfuffle and turns it huge, fast.

8. Don't take your users for granted.

You're the current "thing" but the "next thing" is already on the horizon. Don't think you can do what you want, especially if it's outside the communities ideals, and they'll still stick around, or you'll attract the ones that will agree with you. Replacement doesn't work. Because once you have a reputation for not listening to your users, that'll stick, no matter who agrees with you or not.

9. Don't just take the attitude of "we'll never make everyone happy, so fuck it, we'll do what we want."

This is the most dangerous attitude to take. You don't seem to be doing it.. yet. I just hope you don't ever do so.

takes off pith helmet, hops off soapbox

edited for formatting

desmunda1 · 11時間前

So anyway why did you go on to give detailed statements to thirdparty newsfeeds first, before speaking to us? The place with the tagline 'the frontpage of the internet'? The people you slighted in the first place? Hell even buzzfeed got info before this statement from you...

Edit: Ellen responded to me, but I anticipate she will be heavily downvoted so here's the reply

"It was hard to communicate on the site, because my comments were being downvoted. I did comment here and was communicating on a private subreddit. I'm here now."

xdrg · 10時間前

i gave up on this site when i heard ekjp on npr talking about how reddit was no longer meant to be a "free speech" platform.

i'm just waiting until the dust settles to see what the best alternative will be.

CaptnRonn · 11時間前

A few things beyond a PR statement that would restore my faith in the admins:

Stop shadowbanning users - It was a tool made for spam bots, not to silence dissent. The mere fact that a perfectly legitimate user can be shadowbanned without their knowledge is ridiculous, and it has been happening more and more in the past few months/year
Stop subreddit favoritism - You want to have anti-harassment rules? Great. Enforce them in every. sub. equally. Other meta-reddit subs have to use np links. Why does SRS get away with being able to post direct links with obvious brigading?

Also, /u/ekjp, as much as I would like to think that things are business as usual with you as CEO, you have made some very questionable statements regarding free speech and sexism in tech from a position that is seemingly vacant in logic. The fact that you feel you must talk to major news sites before actually acknowledging your userbase is troubling to say the least. You have done nothing to earn my trust or support, and in fact have done several things to reinforce the opposite. So... prove me wrong?

Edit: Yes I am now aware that my knowledge of np links was wrong. Thank you for informing me everyone. Not going to edit the post as the point still stands. Enforce rules across subs equally.

killmachine91 · 8時間前

"Let me go apologize to newspapers and shit first and then go to our actual community and apologize last"

This is damage control at it's finest. There's a reason your resignation petition is 150k strong.

KnowMatter · 5時間前

What the hell is all this crap about tools? I haven't seen a single Admin post since shit hit the fan talk about anything but tools.

99.99% of people don't give a fuck. If you made a promise to the mods and haven't lived up to it that is between you and the mods.

How about addressing the things people are actually concerned about? Namely the shadowbanning, firing of beloved admins / mods, arbitrary censoring of subreddits, and doctoring of the front page to cover up backlash.

Stop trying to spin this into some "lol sorry promised stuff is taking so long - our bad!" thing and talk about the shit people are actually pissed about!

spank859 · 8時間前

Ellen, you say the vast majority of users don't care about the drama. You are wrong. When the people who are opposing you are doing a damn fine job the rest of us are just chipping in here and there. We don't have to all go apeshit when the message is clear and cut and not being disagreed about. We want you the fuck out. Your only goal is to monetize and our goal is to not monetize. There is no way to bring in sponsors and not lose the key element of this site. Real news with no paid for biased. Yes we like cat pics but for a lot of us this is our news outlet that we don't want becoming FOX or CNN. There is no way to do that with some corporation paying the bills. This is not going to end well for you either way unless you gracefully bow out and let us keep our site the way we fucking like it. You know the way that brought all these people here. The way we became a major opinion in everything. GO AWAY

yurisses · 11時間前

If you're truly sorry for what you've done, do an AMA so you can answer the hard questions. Like what you have to say about shadowbanning people who so far as mention your lawsuit.

SinaSyndrome · 10時間前

How's the search for a new CEO coming along?

freebytes · 10時間前

I have decided to stay for now, but your comments related to the 'vocal minority' of Reddit are so disturbing, though. I have lost trust in Reddit. You have severely damaged the brand for me with that one comment.

The minority of Reddit posts the comments. The minority of Reddit posts the links to content. The minority of Reddit are the ones that care about the success of the site. The millions of 'unique page views per month' could care less if Reddit stopped existing. The vocal minority, though... These people are the lifeblood of the community. You cannot hand-wave their discontent and expect everything to be fine. You cannot afford to lose one loyal member. It is best to treat everyone with dignity and respect.

Do you know how Netflix started?

The genesis of Netflix came in 1997 when I got this late fee, about $40, for Apollo 13. I remember the fee because I was embarrassed about it.

Blockbuster was their own downfall. They thought they were too big to fail. It was not Redbox that caused them to fail. It was not online streaming movies that caused Blockbuster to fail. Blockbuster was their own enemy. They were arrogant and did not respect their customers.

All it takes is for the same arrogance and disrespect to continue within Reddit, and it will suffer the same fate as those that came before it. As we speak, many users are jumping to other platforms. If there was a similar, solid platform already in place that was stable and could handle the load, Reddit would be in very bad shape at this point.

You are fortunate that your vocal minority wants Reddit to succeed, and you are fortunate that your vocal minority is willing to give you even more chances even though you continue to be disrespectful and arrogant.

Edit: Changed change to chance.

well_golly · 5時間前

I see you wrote about:

"Tools: ..."

"Communication: ..."

"Search: ..."

... but you forgot to make one called:

"Policy: We will trust the upvotes and downvotes of users from now on. We will never manipulate the front page, and if admins or leadership at any level tries to, that person will be immediately terminated. We will not shadowban anyone ever for anything, without giving a detailed public explanation that cites specific rules violations. We will make Reddit a 'safe space' even for terribly unpopular opinions that we deeply disagree with."

I want to help, so here's Yishan's apology from before. It's cited right there in the Washington Post article about why Reddit is having all of these problems. You could just use that apology, and sign your name on it:

“We will not ban questionable subreddits,” Reddit’s then-CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of that catastrophe. “You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere — not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong.”

boobookittyfuck69696 · 10時間前

Our team is ready to respond to comments.

What team? I've been here for 15 minutes and I've already seen another 2000 replies go up. Who's reading this? Who's answering our questions??

nuadi · 9時間前

Right. So, here's my feedback for you, and the rest of the admin/devs/engineers/etc.

It feels like you folks are just shitting on your users. For the first time in a few years, I spent this last holiday weekend searching for new content elsewhere on the web. To put that in perspective, since I've joined Reddit, it was the first web site I opened every morning before all others, it was the only site that I received content from, and it was the last site I read before passing out due to human sleep requirements. I did not read news, tech sites, blogs, etc. unless it was linked on Reddit - until last weekend.

You are absolutely correct in that your words are nothing but that - hollow text on a screen that does nothing for my declining interest in this site's administrative direction.

You all need to seriously pull your heads out of eachother's rears and look around you. Yes, you built this site. However, this site is not yours, it's everyone's and we all power it. It seriously feels like you've all lost sight of that very simple reality, and you are walking along some yellow-bricked road to Hubris Junction on your way to Failure Town.

Stop using us, and start working with us.

AdamKeiper · 11時間前

Dear Ms. Pao –

In the interest of transparency, I wonder if you might answer a question or two. Setting aside any personnel matters that you understandably cannot discuss, would you please confirm or deny the claim made several days ago that Reddit, under your leadership, wishes to undertake "a bunch of highly commercial things around AMAs"? Is that characterization correct, partially correct, or entirely incorrect? And, while still eschewing any discussion of individual personnel, would you say that your colleagues — the administrators of Reddit — have largely shared that goal, or has there been substantial pushback and disagreement?

Thank you.

to4stsolo · 11時間前

Too little too late. We hate you.

Shaddowbans, bullshit rule enforcement, temper tantrums, etc. Its just unforgivable. Go fuck yourselves.

BluBlazr · 6時間前

As a leukemia survivor, I was outraged to learn that an employee battling this illness was fired for not being deemed healthy especially considering your history with discrimination lawsuits. A charitable donation to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society won't give a man his livelihood, but it would certainly help fund research that could find a cure for our cancer, and cross job stability off the list of problems many leukemia patients are facing.

Fun Fact: Did you know patients taking TKI therapy for a rare form of leukemia are out of pocket thousands of dollars a month if not qualified for assistance? Gleevec, Tasigna, and Sprycel are the three most commonly prescribed TKIs.

7084701770 · 9時間前

I work in a larger company dealing with many ~~large~~ massive companies and the one thing I've learned by doing my job, and that is sticking out at me here; is Disassociating Pronouns:
"WE screwed up..."
"WE haven't..."

It concerns me that the issue as I see is we, as the whole, have pinned the problems at hand on one person, who I believe the post is by (however another problem is the lack of any sort of introduction, another Disassociating Behavior) but admittedly do not know enough about the workings of this to comfortably say so. Furthermore, this lone named actor is not owning much responsibility to the issue at hand.

What's bothering me is this feels like a very side-stepping statement; carefully crafted to appear apologetic, but in a deeper (and possibly a more subconscious level) is at least attempting to deflect the majority of the issue onto others, as in, reddit the company as a whole.

As I often say in meetings, I feel this is nothing more than a weak pandering to demands which contains not only little to no concrete answers but only stands to, at best, further muddy the view point; and at worst, push the involved parties further into a sense of disconnect and displeasure with the involved actor.

DoctorDank · 11時間前

Your second to last paragraph is spot on.

These are just words.

You haven't actually instituted any reforms yet. To be honest, this just feels like corporate newspeak. You're just telling us what we want to hear. I think you'd ve a better response if you actually instituted the reforms you speak of, instead of just talking about how you're going to do them.

Because talk is cheap.

But, at least you acknowledge that the way you went about dismissing Victoria was utterly tone-deaf, and very disrespectful to the (unpaid, hard-working) moderators who relied on her in order to make their subreddits the very best.

Oh wait no, you totally didn't do that either. You just say you're acknow ledging a "long history" of mistakes, without actually acknowledging them at all!

More newspeak.

So, I don't really know what to make of this "announcement." Guess we'll just have to wait and see if you put your money where your mouth is, won't we?

Edit: much thanks to /u/alloutpenguinwar for guilding my comment!

Edit 2: for those of you telling me software development takes time? No shit. I know that. That doesn't mean reddit inc couldn't have laid out at least some sort of timetable, as opposed to nebulous promises of mod tools being available in the future. And yes, you can have timetables for software development. Happens all the time. So sorry, that's not a legitimate excuse for, well, anything.

vorpib · 11時間前

How about apologizing for calling your strongest user base insignificant ?

Keltino · 10時間前

Wow,you have really swayed me. Signed the petition.

fritzly · 11時間前

Are we just suppose to pm /u/krispykrackers?

geocitiesdreaming · 10時間前

Yeah, but no. What I'm about to say is absolutely going to be buried, and that's fucking fine, but I just need to say it somewhere

MOD TOOLS ARE A PROBLEM, BUT A MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM IS THE FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE THAT IS HAPPENING TO REDDIT; THAT WAS NOT ADDRESSED HERE, AND IS NOT ONLY CONTINUALLY NOT BEING ADDRESSED, BUT CONTINUALLY BEING BURIED UNDER "MOD TOOLS" AND THE REDDIT COMMUNITY IS PRETTY MUCH FALLING IN LINE.

Long time lurker, don't even particularly care about reddit that much, but when I see this many people simply not getting what is a very obvious situation, I have to say something. For clarity and brevity I will try and do this in list form:

Generally agreed upon roblems with reddit

Censorship
Commercialization
No transparency
No communication
No Respect

I think that's pretty much the long-and-short of it. But look at this post carefully, then look at everything she and Alexis have been saying to media sources in the past two days. They have entirely been spinning this problem as "oh, we're sorry, we don't know how to communicate! We really screwed up with mod tools, we're so sorry!" And I get why some random reporter from another news site would bite that, but that fact that so many redditors are completely buying that as the primary, and ostensibly only, issue is fucking mind boggling. Yes, mod tools are an issue. Yes, I want the mods to get what they need, but there is a gigantic difference between one problem that can essentially be solved with a dedicated and competent staff, and another problem which is a group of leader fundamentally changing the ethos of an entire website, not only are the nowhere near close to having the same importance, but when most of the reddit hivemind seems to follow this Pao party line that the "mod tools issue" is the primary issue, then it almost becomes black comedy.

And I completely understand that she can't talk about Victoria being fired. However, from the few things we do know about that situation, we can deduce a few things:

Obviously it was a bad firing since Victoria happily stood aside while reddit burned over her firing.
While not an undeniable fact, anyone with common sense can deduce that she was likely fired because she was the person stopping them from commercializing AMAs

THIS IS A HUGE DEAL

The Victoria firing is not a catalyst, or in any way an isolated issue. None of these are isolated ideas. Increased censorship plays for the case of commercialization, (And my "censorship" I don't only mean the FPH business, i mean for the past two days I have been looking at the differences between the top posts and the front page and it is remarkable how many incredibly-upvoted anti-reddit posts are not making it to the front page. This is very clearly website manipulation to make it seem like it's business as usual). Victoria being fired plays for commercialization. Mods not having the tools they need makes them less powerful which also plays for the case of commercialization. COMMERCIALIZATION IS THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THIS WHOLE MESS. Unless you guys want a reddit where every post is an advertisement, something has to be done about this now.

Everything about how they have spun the narrative, to how they manipulate the front page, to their business practices, to this awful marketing class PR memo they crudely labeled as an "apology" smells disgusting.

And what about that leaked screenshot of Alexis talking to mods where he explicitly said that all AMAs while be coordinated through an AMA email address, but would not give an answer on who that person is. That's essentially a smoking gun that is on gawker, digg and god knows where else, but is for some reason unable to make any traction on reddit. And I know that it's partially because so many power users are drinking kool aid, but it's also because, frankly, it seems like this entire website is being manipulated with ease from corporate HQ. I mean, that's the new plan with AMAs, sponsored AMA working through Alexi's weird nerve point email address which will likely be housed by a team of PR/marketing aficionados who will ensure that AMAs will be glorified commercials.

But whatever, clearly these people won, clearly you guys are fine with spending all day on a glorified home shopping network that poses as a forum. I'm off to fucking Voat anyway, but I had to fucking put this somewhere, just for my own fucking sanity, because I am really just astounded that no one can put this together.

Godspeed

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