Reddit CEO promises change as site stabilises after mod protest

Interim CEO Ellen Pao has said that change is on the way following Reddit’s return to normal following last week’s mod protest.

A number of the site’s subreddits were last week locked down after the mod in charge of the site’s popular AMAs, named Victoria, was allegedly fired.

The bigger problem is that we haven’t helped our moderators with better support after many years of promising to do so,” Pao said. We do value moderators; they allow Reddit to function and they allow each subreddit to be unique and to appeal to different communities.

‘This year, we have started building better tools for moderators and for admins to help keep subreddits and Reddit awesome, but our infrastructure is monolithic, and it is going to take some time. We are also making changes to reddit.com, adding new features like better search and building mobile web, but our testing plan needs improvement. As a result, we are breaking some of the ways moderators moderate.

We are going to figure this out and fix it.”

However, it appears that plenty of disquiet remains under the surface, with a post on the now reinstated r/IAmA subreddit (Ask Me Anything) stating:

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,” it said. 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.”

A later update appeared to suggest that some progress has been made, however.

Alexis Ohanian (/u/kn0thing) has been working with us over the weekend to institute new protocols for how reddit will work with the mods of communities looking to hosts AMAs. The goal is to create a much more ‘hands off’ system regarding the scheduling and facilitation of AMAs. He has described the team of existing admins in charge of funneling AMAs to the right mods for scheduling in the interim. This team will be replaced by a full time employee in the future.

While we’re still unhappy with how this transition occurred, it would be unfair for us not to publicly recognise the recent efforts on the part of the site administration to ‘make it right’.”