Reddit News: Pages Back Online, Dispute Still Not Solved, Users Want CEO to Resign
Reddit's pages are mostly back up and running after a dispute between subreddit moderators and the website administration caused them to be shutdown for the weekend. However, there are still lingering problems within the social news site, CNN Money reports.
Over 150,000 people have signed an online petition asking for Reddit CEO Ellen Pao to resign. This petition had been circulating for a month, but only had 10,000 signatures until protests started late last week.
Unpaid moderators shut down over 100 subreddits on popular topics like gaming, movies and science to protest the firing of Victoria Taylor, Reddit's director of talent and communications who also ran the very popular "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) subreddit.
Taylor's AMA series allowed Reddit users to interact directly with celebrities, politicians or people with interesting stories. Even President Obama participated in a AMA forum. Taylor was able to prove that the participant in the AMA was actually the person they claimed they were and not an assistant.
The moderators said they really relied on Taylor to help them.
"[T]he admins didn't realise how much we rely on [Taylor]. Part of it is proof, of course: we know it's legitimate when she's sitting right there next to the person and can make them provide proof... for [Ask Me Anything] to work the way it currently does, we need Victoria. Without her, we need to figure out a different way for it to work," moderator karmanaut said.
Reddit's co-founder Alexis Ohanian told the community that she was sorry Taylor was removed without communicating with them.
"They should have been told earlier about the transition and we should have provided more detail on the transition plan," CEO Pao said.
Moderators are not confident that Reddit will be able to find an adequate replacement for Taylor and say that Reddit does not have a plan in regards to the AMA series.
Pao says communication between the site's administrators and the moderators must improve, according to NPR.
"We rely heavily on the moderators and we really depend on them," she said. "What we learned from this event is that we need to communicate better with them and that we don't take them for granted."
Subscribe to Latin Post!
Sign up for our free newsletter for the Latest coverage!
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of latinpost.com