Is This End Of The Road For Reddit As We Know It

If you’re the type of person that hangs around the internet quite a lot in your ever multiplying hours of procrastination then you’ll doubtlessly be more than familiar with Reddit.

If you’re not, then Reddit is essentially a weird and wonderful site where users are encouraged to post links to anything they find interesting, amazing, or just downright weird.

It’s a place that’s success is directly controlled and defined by the people that use it and pretty much forms the backbone of internet sharing.

But, for everything that’s absolutely fantastic about Reddit, there are also dark corners; places where people spout racist and homophobic rants, incite body shaming hatred and a whole host of other nastiness.

It's an unsavoury side that’s largely tolerated due to the ‘free speech’ positioning of the overall site – simply put, Reddit isn’t supposed to be policed. It self-moderates by up or down voting content.

In recent weeks the site has been in revolt, opposed to the sacking of long-time Reddit employee and AMA curator Victoria Taylor, and full of accusations towards the then CEO Ellen Pao that she was attempting to kill off free speech on the site.

The heat got so much for Pao (combined with threats and public humiliation on the site) that she resigned.

Reddit felt like a battle had been won. Until last night that is when former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong made the announcement that Ellen Pao was the only one fighting for the Redditors.

Check out his amazing open letter:

AYYYYYY LMAO

How’s everyone doing? This is AWESOME!

There’s something I neglected to tell you all this time (“executive privilege”), but I’m declassifying a lot of things these days. Back around the time of the/r/creepshots[1]debacle, I wrote to /u/spez[2] for advice. I had met him shortly after I had taken the job, and found him to be a great guy. Back in the day when reddit was small, the areas he oversaw were engineering, product, and the business aspects - those are the same things I tend to focus on in a company (each CEO has certain areas of natural focus, and hires others to oversee the rest). As a result, we were able to connect really well and have a lot of great conversations - talking to him was really valuable.

Well, when things were heating around the /r/creepshots[3]thing and people were calling for its banning, I wrote to him to ask for advice. The very interesting thing he wrote back was “back when I was running things, if there was anything racist, sexist, or homophobic I’d ban it right away. I don’t think there’s a place for such things on reddit. Of course, now that reddit is much bigger, I understand if maybe things are different.”

I’ve always remembered that email when I read the occasional posting here where people say “the founders of reddit intended this to be a place for free speech.” Human minds love originalism, e.g. “we’re in trouble, so surely if we go back to the original intentions, we can make things good again.” Sorry to tell you guys but NO, that wasn’t their intention at all ever. Sucks to be you, /r/coontown[4] - I hope you enjoy voat!

The free speech policy was something I formalized because it seemed like the wiser course at the time. It’s worth stating that in that era, we were talking about whether it was ok for people to post creepy pictures of women taken legally in public. That’s shitty, but it’s a far cry from the extremes of hate that some parts of the site host today. It seemed that allowing creepers to post (anonymized) pictures of women taken in public, in a relatively small subreddit that never showed up on the front page, was a small price to pay for making it clear that we were a place welcoming of all opinions and discourse.

Having made that decision - much of reddit’s current condition is on me. I didn’t anticipate what (some) redditors would decide to do with freedom. reddit has become a lot bigger - yes, a lot better - AND a lot worse. I have to take responsibility.

But... the most delicious part of this is that on at least two separate occasions, the board pressed /u/ekjp[5] to outright ban ALL the hate subreddits in a sweeping purge. She resisted, knowing the community, claiming it would be a shitshow. Ellen isn’t some “evil, manipulative, out-of-touch incompetent she-devil” as was often depicted. She was approved by the board and recommended by me because when I left, she was the only technology executive anywhere who had the chops and experience to manage a startup of this size, AND who understood what reddit was all about. As we can see from her post-resignation activity[6] , she knows perfectly well how to fit in with the reddit community and is a normal, funny person - just like in real life - she simply didn’t sit on reddit all day because she was busy with her day job.

Ellen was more or less inclined to continue upholding my free-speech policies./r/fatpeoplehate[7] was banned for inciting off-site harassment, not discussing fat-shaming. What all the white-power racist-sexist neckbeards don’t understand is that with her at the head of the company, the company would be immune to accusations of promoting sexism and racism: she is literally Silicon Valley’s #1 Feminist Hero, so any “SJWs” would have a hard time attacking the company for intentionally creating a bastion (heh) of sexist/racist content. She probably would have tolerated your existence so long as you didn’t cause any problems - I know that her long-term strategies were to find ways to surface and publicize reddit’s good parts - allowing the bad parts to exist but keeping them out of the spotlight. It would have been very principled - the CEO of reddit, who once sued her previous employer for sexual discrimination, upholds free speech and tolerates the ugly side of humanity because it is so important to maintaining a platform for open discourse. It would have been unassailable.

Well, now she’s gone (you did it reddit!), and /u/spez[8] has the moral authority as a co-founder to move ahead with the purge. We tried to let you govern yourselves and you failed, so now The Man is going to set some Rules. Admittedly, I can’t say I’m terribly upset.

Times are certainly changing on Reditt - and hopefully, despite the haters, for the better.