CEO of Reddit, Ellen Pao, apologizes

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By Larry Banks

Interim CEO of Reddit, Ellen Pao, apologized to the Reddit user base this week after a petition asked the company to oust her received more than 175,000 signatures over the last few days.

“We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years. We haven’t communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes”, Pao said in a Reddit post.

Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: “we screwed up”

On Friday, it transpired that Victoria Taylor, an incredibly popular employee on the site, was no longer working at Reddit. Reddit users believed she was fired, and to protest against her removal, volunteer moderators shut down hundreds of the site’s communities.

Taylor helped to run the company’s “Ask Me Anything” feature, which allows users to ask questions to and talk with famous guests such as Bill Gates and President Obama.

RELATED: Petition to remove Ellen Pao as Reddit CEO gets 100,000 signatures in 3 days.

In the apology, Pao said the company would take steps to improve the website: improving tools, communication with the subreddit moderators, and restoring access to an old search function for moderators.

“I don’t have all the answers, and it will take time for us to deliver concrete results”, Pao said. “I mean it when I say we screwed up, and we want to have a meaningful ongoing discussion. I know we’ve drifted out of touch with the community as we’ve grown and added more people, and we want to connect more. I and the team are committed to talking more often with the community, starting now”.

On the weekend, subreddits were set to private, blocked from view in protest of Taylor’s removal from Reddit. Reddit does have paid employees, but many communities are moderated by volunteers who aren’t part of the company.

You can read Pao’s full apology here.

SOURCE: BusinessInsider.

Images Courtesy of DepositPhotos

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