We apologize - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/ <comment><USER2> Why did this apology come out today and not before Pao spoke to news outlets about this topic? Why wouldn't you try to talk to your upset users quickly and directly?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit- moderato...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/technology/reddit-moderators- shut-down-parts-of-site-over-executives-dismissal.html) [http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/05/420...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/05/420296522/reddit- ceo-says-miscommunication-led-to-blackout-protest)

<comment><USER3> If you note her account's history, you might notice that _every single one_ of her contributions has been mass-downvoted, including earlier responses on the matter. Downvoted content gets hidden. There's an ongoing voting war over the submission itself, with only 61% upvoting. That's way, way low for reddit.

Speculation: It's very possible that they decided to do press work first so that the message would not be muted by downvote brigading. That's a stupid thing to have to do, and has only served to upset even more people.

<comment><USER4> Can't they just 'pin' the CEO's post to the top?

This reeks of lack of imagination.

<comment><USER5> Given the way this discussion has gone so far, then people will trash the admins for "pushing content they want to the top of the page" or similar.

<comment><USER6> While I think the entire furore is completely misguided and utterly childish, I doubt that would've been the case. Besides, they have a blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who has been using reddit for nearly a decade, I can't help but find this whole thing to be completely absurd. Mods are claiming they're the backbone of the whole site, which is complete nonsense. It's the internet; one person steps down, there are thousands to replace them... just like reddit and other sites have always worked. The whole organized "blackout" just felt like a bunch of people on a power trip who didn't want to step away because that would be relinquishing some sort of internet "status." When did it get so complicated?

<comment><USER8> _> Mods are claiming they're the backbone of the whole site, which is complete nonsense. It's the internet; one person steps down, there are thousands to replace them... just like reddit and other sites have always worked._

Perhaps we're seeing people slowly become aware of this fact. In any other context, having given long hours of uncompensated labor to a for-profit entity that views them as completely disposable is not something that most people would feel great about.

<comment><USER9> Nor would most spend their time doing so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a pretty shitty apology. The key problem is that ekjp isn't owning the failures directly. Just look at the language in the post...

"We screwed up." "We haven't communicated well..." "we acknowledge this long history of mistakes..."

This type of language shows a lack of ownership and accountability of the author. It's a huge red flag. If one of my employees wrote something like this I would never have accepted it.

A good apology would have started with something like, "I am sorry." Everything that happens at a company is ultimately the CEO's responsibility. The language used in ekjp's apology does little to reassure me that she actually feels like she owns the failures.

<comment><USER11> Whatever you think of Ellen, she's been ceo since Nov 14. How exactly does that makes her personally responsible for ongoing failures from multiple years beforehand? Did she borrow a DeLorean and order the team around during Yishan's tenure?

<comment><USER12> And to be fair to her she does take responsibility:

> and the buck stops with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to dislike her. They have no real reason to be mad at the one woman being fired. They're just coming off as a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation.

As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired. But the hive have decided those are the things that the community should do (and dislike Justin Beiber and Kanye West and whatever else), and the community does it. I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset.

Children are emotional.

<comment><USER14> One look at the completely irrelevant second sentence of the petition to remove her [1] should tell you everything to know about why users are actually angry at her. This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror.

Reddit has harbored toxic subreddits for long enough that they've nurtured a huge user base of racists and misogynists. It's a demographic crisis and it apparently doesn't take much to incite these mobs. These vocal and active users hated Pao before she became reddit CEO and these events were entirely predictable.

[1] [https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of- red...](https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-reddit-inc)

<comment><USER15> It doesn't take a misogynist or a racist to be upset to see a well-liked person fired abruptly, especially with no apparent cause. There is a lot of stored-up discontent with the way Reddit is run, some of it even goes back to when Yishan was CEO. It's a fool's errand to try to please all of such a huge userbase, but Pao seems to have been able to unite some very unlikely factions against her.

<comment><USER14> You say there is no apparent cause, but you're not privy to the details and have no right to be unless you were a reddit employee working closely with her. It would be bad form to publicize the details of anyone's firing, regardless of the position and company.

The only legitimately complaint in all of this is that there wasn't any notice to people who depending on the fired person. That doesn't even begin to explain the outrage, though.

<comment><USER15> >but you're not privy to the details

That's why I said there is no _apparent_ cause.

>not privy to the details and have no right to be

Strictly speaking that's correct. Here in the real world, Reddit might weigh more carefully how their operational decisions have affected actual operations, as opposed to continuing to operate as if they have total control of every aspect of Reddit.

>It would be bad form to publicize the details of anyone's firing

Of course it is, but keeping silent won't stop the speculation. Something tells me that decorum isn't the reason for Reddit's silence. I suspect they are merely worried about exposing themselves to the possibility of a lawsuit. In that light, it may have been better to come up with a more creative way to move /u/chooter out of her role.

>The only legitimately complaint in all of this is that there wasn't any notice to people who depending on the fired person.

That is one of the legitimate complaints about /u/chooter's firing. Like it or not, it is perfectly legitimate for anyone, especially Reddit mods and users to have and express an opinion about Reddit and their operations. That's kind of what Reddit is, a place for people to express opinions; I am not sure how that aspect escaped the notice of management. And, yeah, Reddit also dropped the ball by not having a contingency plan for /u/chooter's departure and they probably don't have contingency plans for other employees in critical roles.

>That doesn't even begin to explain the outrage, though.

That's because the firing of /u/chooter was just the catalyst that began the release of a lot of pent-up discontent.

<comment><USER14> What was the pent-up discontent about? Removing awful subreddits? I still can't come up with any good reasons why people are so angry. Some moderators should be mildly peeved, but that's about it.

<comment><USER15> >What was the pent-up discontent about?

Lack of moderation tools, unresponsive admins, accusations of shady conspiracy stuff (payola, censorship, etc), there is other stuff. I don't care to list it all but you should look into it if you want your arguments to be taken seriously.

>Removing awful subreddits?

As has been related to you many times, that is a recent issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There were a few components associated with this recent upheaval.

\- Earlier that week, reddit modified the search function which (though I don't know the details as I am not a mod and really don't care) apparently affected or limited the moderators' abilities is some negative manner.

\- The banning of harassing subreddits, though none of the lurkers cared at all and the majority of active users did not care, left a sour taste in many users' mouths.

\- The firing of that employee apparently greatly affected the ability to facilitate the most popular subreddit on the website, as well as a few others.

When the mods of IAMA closed shop for a while due to the third issue, the powder keg exploded, leading others who disliked the treatment of mods and those who irrationally hate the reddit CEO to make a hullabaloo for eight hours.

Frankly, I deleted my reddit account due to this. Not for any dislike the CEO or a desire to stand up for mods' rights, but rather because I genuinely do not care about the drama anymore and would rather focus my attention on more important things[1] and more interesting topics[2].

[1] Such as commenting on Hacker News.

[2] Such as discussions about Reddit.

:-)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's crazy to me how poorly this whole recent "revolt" was handled. The only thing of value to Reddit Inc is the community, so you think they would be more proactive about everything, that they would be hiring more community managers rather than firing key ones. Is this their Digg moment? Probably not, but how many more fuckups like this can they make before the users leave for good?

I've cut Pao a lot of slack in the past, but this makes her look like she has no idea what she's doing. No communication for days? Speaking to outside reporters before speaking to her community? It makes no sense to me.

<comment><USER18> She did, in fact, attempt to reply to early discussions on Reddit but she was downvoted into oblivion (e.g. -5500+ down votes) and she wasn't ever going to be heard, no matter how relevant or important her discussion was. So she probably thought it was smarter (and would get better exposure while the community cools down a little bit) to communicate with Buzzfeed et. al.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I've heard that, and that's crazy too. The community actually has a veto on communications from the CEO? Absolutely nuts. They couldn't just hack the backend to give her a billion upvotes?

<comment><USER19> Much of this controversy is driven by the community's loss of trust in the site's administration. Do you think the tactic you suggest would be constructive toward rebuilding that trust?

<comment><USER17> Faking upvotes, no. But that wouldn't be necessary if they had an actual communication channel in place ahead of time. Which they would if they really understood the value of the community and what it takes to manage it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > We are sorry -Reddit Corporate

> Prove it -Reddit Community

There is no point in analyzing the apology, only the actions that occur over the next month.

</comment><comment><USER21> That was actually a decent apology not the typical corporate "We are sorry you feel this way non-apology apology".

Yeah it came late. But better late than never.

<comment><USER22> I dunno, she admits they broke promises and promise to do better _this time_.

Anyone who has been in that relationship knows it's entirely typical. They _could_ change, but getting your hopes up is asking to get hurt again.

Also: they didn't pull the curtain back at all, so I still find it to be a bland corporate statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the first thing I've seen from Ellen Pao that looks like a step in the right direction. There area few challenges she faces at reddit that I don't envy. It is an unfortunate consequence of her lawsuit that she gained enough notoriety to be disliked by a portion of the male cohort of reddit. She is now in the awkward position of both trying to address real problems with the site that have gone unaddressed for a long time and mitigating the damage that her personal brand is causing by being associated with the site.

Regardless of my personal opinions about her lawsuit it's really unfortunate that the simple act of bringing the lawsuit has bled so much into her interactions with the reddit community.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why hasn't the board of directors that governs Reddit taken action yet? They need to hire a new CEO ASAP before the site becomes another Digg and people leave.

</comment><comment><USER25> I feel bad for Pao on a personal level, but I feel like she is too divisive to be an effective leader of a site like reddit. All people deserve respect though and should not have to put up with hateful personal attacks.

I think mainly this underscores the need for the internet to evolve. Sites like reddit and twitter are too important to be controlled by a single for- profit entity.

We need distributed systems that respect anonymity and privacy that prevent censorship. We also need the ability for groups to form where content can be curated.

I think there are a number of projects in development that have potential. It will be interesting to see where things go.

</comment><comment><USER26> well, the harassment standard is worded in such a way that's it's purely subjective, so I predict the continuation of inconsistent application of the policy.

also, a decade+ of "terrorism" has left me feeling that fear-based policies are a serious mistake.

on the other hand, I don't and likely never will use reddit, so this is all popcorn-munching entertainment to me.

</comment><comment><USER27> They are trying to reframe the discussion around the idea that they failed in communicating. What they failed in, actually, was keeping an astounding and dedicated employee their users loved.

<comment><USER28> No, I think they're dead on. They're allowed to fire people even if the community likes them.

But they did fail to communicate. They failed to communicate it was going to happen (no public transition). They failed to communicate it DID happen (people found out via side-channels), they failed to communicate a plan to keep things going smoothly (seems they didn't have one, which is amazing).

This applies to other incidents as well. They failed to clearly communicate the rules when they banned a few subreddits a few months ago. There are TONS of subs that are in clear violations of various rules but nothing happens to them and no one has every clearly explained why. Just "We're doing something" statements and guessing.

Quite a few of their recent makes were made SO MUCH WORSE by their lack of clear and timely communication. They would still be issues, but at least people could understand what was going on instead of rapid-rumor-mill-tea- leaf-interpreting.

<comment><USER27> > No, I think they're dead on. They're allowed to fire people even if the > community likes them.

Well, this is true, because as owners can do whatever they want. But Reddit's 'product' is community, plain and simple. So firing a loved admin is essentially taking away a bit of the reason for being on the site for many of the users. I think at the heart of the discontent is the tension between a grass roots community and the fact that there is ultimately a autocratic power over it all. In other words, the firing is a reminder to the users that they don't have control over their community.

This whole incident is just growing pain. Ultimately, they will form or join another community where they don't need a paid liaison to the AMA person. That community will have more self-governance. Additionally, that community may self-fund itself, and the destruction of the the community in the interest of monetization will be less easy. There is likely a lot of work that needs be done to enable that type of community, both technically and socially.

<comment><USER29> Social sites really aren't easy to monetize without pissing off your users. MySpace imploded, Twitter still isn't profitable, Google backed off'ish from Plus, etc... I think Facebook is one of the few that seemed to _successfully_ monetize a free social site.

I think the issue is that Pao (et al.) genuinely don't understand their community. That's the major source of the friction. Consequently, they can't figure out a realistic plan to build a healthy business around it. They seem to manage to piss a large percentage of their community off with every minor change they try to make. It's a bit sad because it's a huge community.

Possibly Aether ([http://getaether.net/](http://getaether.net/)) might be something like what you have in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is just a testament to how most MBAs are incapable of seeing past the blinders that were put on their eyes in B school. Anyone who's been in Silicon Valley long enough will have seen this in many other forms (I know I have), although perhaps not as high profile as this one.

The success of Reddit is directly attributable to high profile subs (/r/AskScience, /r/AskHistorians, /r/AMA, /r/ListenToThis, etc.) and less visible but still well run subs that cater to more niche interests/topics (/r/MakeupAddiction, /r/PersonalFinance, etc.). Those subreddits would not exist without the thousands of man hours put in by moderators who are volunteers (modulo a few exceptions, such as Victoria). Anyone who has moderated an internet community knows how much sweat, effort, time, and pain go into maintaining a high quality community, and how crucial it is to keep your moderators happy and make them feel like their effort is valued.

The fact that the people running Reddit do not seem to realize that is a perfectly valid reason for the user base to be angry. A lot of Silicon Valley executives like to think of their company+product as some neat little money making machine that sits in a vacuum and that they can tweak and modify as they like. But the reality is that building a community platform like Reddit is very different from running a sausage factory. You can run your sausage factory in to the ground, and the sausages won't complain (the workers might, but the US does a pretty good job at avoiding that through strict control on labor unions). But when you start shitting on Reddit, the users will complain and protest - after all, you might control the code and the servers, but the community as a whole has contributed much more than you have to the end product.

You can't separate "reddit" and "the community" like some commenters here are doing. This dualism makes no sense - reddit and its community are the same thing. You can't have the thoughtful, well run threads on /r/AskScience without the dumb jokes on /r/funny.

Ellen Pao and friends do not seem to grasp those subtleties (this apology is just damage control), and it lead to the complete disaster we are seeing right now. This isn't rocket science - in fact the Reddit community is quite predictable. Any Reddit user would have been able to tell you how the community was going to react to these actions. The fact that Ellen Pao has some shady connections (her husband not being in jail because he has enough money is a good first example) is just more fuel on top of the fire. This was extremely easy to predict, and the fact that the Reddit leadership seems to be completely clueless about it is a very bad sign for things to come. The reddit community didn't have a problem with kn0thing, yishan, and others because they were first and foremost reddit users and know how to interact with the community. It's not the case for the current people in charge.

The community has every right to be up in arms. And if you think that the Reddit community is shit and don't spend time there, like some commenters here state, then what makes you feel like your input has any sort of relevance?

This isn't a technology or management fiasco - it's a political debacle. At a community interaction level, it's not very different from taking someone with arbitrary credentials and putting them in charge of a country they're completely unfamiliar with in the hope that they're going to make that country a peaceful democracy. It just doesn't work - you need the leadership to come from the community for it to have any lasting chance.

<comment><USER31> Your opening potshot at MBAs detracts from the meat of your comment, which contains at least two important insights: (1) the Reddit "product" and community are inseparable; (2) to manage a community you must understand the community, which almost always requires participation in the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looking past the vitriol towards Ellen Pao, this seems to be primarily due to a history of miscommunication between moderators, who feel they should have more power and better ways to handle the communities they support, and the admins of Reddit. While I think that there are definite issues on both sides -- I'm not a moderator, especially not of a big subreddit, so I don't know how disrespectful or how much the admins ignored the moderators requests, so my perspective is of an outsider -- I really feel like this is all just a temper tantrum that the moderators handled poorly, potentially purposefully. The users by and large did not need to know that Victoria was fired, and it's a shame that the moderators 1) let that information out, and 2) by letting it out, effectively let it be used as a base for a parade against Ellen Pao. It can't be argued that the moderators didn't/couldn't know this would happen because this kind of shit happens on Reddit all the time, and the more vocal parts of the community will cling to their dislike of Pao with this.

I think that the admins should have handled it better, for sure -- they could have at least given the moderators that relied on Victoria's help the heads up of, "hey, we are going to transition to a new community manager, for the time being X, Y, and Z are going to occur," but the backlash from the community and that the moderators are effectively using the community for their own gains instead of trying to handle it internally is a pretty bad reflection on how the community is structured as a whole. All I can think of is that this is basically 4chan and social media combined.

</comment><comment><USER32> This post regarding the apology is fairly new, with a lot of points and comments. Yet it has already sunk to page 2. I assume that reddit-related posts are given a negative weighting of some kind on HN, of late?

</comment><comment><USER33> A lot of Reddit users forget or don;t realize that Reddit is a business, not a non-profit.

For all we know, it may not have been Ellen's fault...a lot of people jumping the gun

</comment><comment><USER34> Serious question about my use case and opting for a substitute: I use reddit to learn and interact with a community about my interests or things that I want to learn. Reddit has been fantastic for this and about 75% of the time the users of specific communities are great resources that I really can't find anywhere else.

Recently, it's become increasingly apparent that drama around and within reddit is ruining this - all I want to do is learn and engage - it's impossible now to avoid it. Any alternative that keeps the quality high and the format similar without all the ugly dramatics?

</comment><comment><USER35> Maybe it was laziness, but till now I've been expecting good things from companies backed by YCombinator. Ekjp and kn0thing are eroding the brand value of YC.

MY 2 cents, seen from far away.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why do people moderate large subreddits? They don't get paid... what are they actually getting out of it? Why continue to do it?

"fuck you, pay me"

<comment><USER37> As someone who moderated a large forum (not a subreddit) of >100,000 users (with ~15,000 active users at peak and rarely dipping below 3,000 users at inactive times) a large part has to do with community.

The difference decent moderation can make in a large community can vastly impact a community. There's a lot of networking that happens because of it. I was an extremely well-liked moderator who would take over "dying" sections of the forum. I was even given the nickname "The Lifegiver" because any board put under my control would go from 10 posts/week to 100s of posts/day. I made a lot of friends whom I still talk with to this day, nearly a decade later. _That_ is what made being a moderator worth my time.

As to what jeletonskelly commented in response to you - no. There isn't always someone willing to "fill the shoes". The boards I was left in charge of were dead precisely _because_ nobody wanted to fill the shoes. Many members of those communities were asked if they wanted to be "promoted" to moderate their board: they always declined the position. Sometimes a board is dead and nobody knows how to solve it or what it would take to revitalize it. Not everyone is a leader.

Moderators who are bad with community management have their lives turned to hell. Death threats from users who dislike your actions, dealing with community drama (having to mediate between two users in an argument without pissing either side off), dealing with 'staff' drama (mods who disagree with how another mod handled something usually) is not worth "being in power" or any "ego trip" you get from the position.

Moderators are not too far off from the founding administrator when it comes to forums (or subreddits): They enjoy the community and want to help have a part in the creation of the community.

Every good moderator I've dealt with has always put the community before anything else.

It's when money _does_ get involved that moderation and administrative decisions become questioned. The decisions are no longer _What is best for the community?_ but _What is best for my account balance?_

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Popcorn tastes good." \- Never forget that. Personally, I've moved on to Snapzu. Peace out Reddit, it's been real. :)

[http://i.imgur.com/rburhK9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rburhK9.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER39> Reddit users are too stupid to effectively use reddit.</comment>


Bubble – new android social app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubbleinc.bubble <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

I recently released an Android app called Bubble. Basically, it's an app which let's you define an area on a map (Bubble) where you can send and receive messages. As long as you are in that Bubble, you'll receive chats from other people in realtime from people who also send messages to that Bubble. The idea came from the belief that you can use technology to reduce the friction of strangers interacting with each other in a place such as a cafe or bar etc. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> I remember speculating about such an app more than a decade ago, good to see it.</comment>