Reddit’s users are in revolt – The Verge The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts. 2015-07-30T18:59:24+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/rss/stream/8654318 https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1 Ross Miller <![CDATA[Former Reddit AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor is now working for the place that hosted AMAs]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/30/9075071/reddit-ama-victoria-taylor-wework 2015-07-30T14:59:24-04:00 2015-07-30T14:59:24-04:00

The former "face" of Reddit's popular Ask Me Anything section - whose sudden dismissal caused a massive upheaval in the Reddit community and eventually led to CEO Ellen Pao's departure - has found a new home at WeWork. Announced in a post on the r/self subreddit (appropriately enough), Taylor said she will be joining the workspace company as "their first-ever director of digital community."

Details on what Taylor will be doing as digital community director are slim, but at least it won't be a big change in her commute: "Reddit's New York office has been based out of the WeWork space in Soho West [sic] since before I joined in 2013." WeWork …

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]]> Adi Robertson <![CDATA[Reddit needs to stop pretending racism is valuable debate]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/29/9067189/reddit-racism-is-not-a-useful-viewpoint 2015-07-29T15:06:40-04:00 2015-07-29T15:06:40-04:00

Reddit's executives are still walking a thin, shaky tightrope as they update the site's content policy. Today, CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman posted a small update on Reddit's new moderator tools and rules for policing the site's worst communities - which could spell one of the biggest shifts in the site's history. He stayed to chat about what the changes would mean.

And the inevitable question came up: "How do you feel about hosting what may soon be the biggest white supremacist forum on the internet?"

Horrible, actually, but I don't think you can win an argument by simply silencing the opposition.

Another user pointed out a seven-year …

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]]> Russell Brandom <![CDATA[Ellen Pao is just hanging out on Reddit now]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/15/8974651/ellen-pao-reddit-user-casual-conversation 2015-07-15T17:19:05-04:00 2015-07-15T17:19:05-04:00

There's a lot of bad blood going around Reddit this week - but apparently it hasn't kept Ellen Pao off the site.

As a joke, the former CEO was invited to be an honorary moderator of the /r/casualconversations subreddit - and yesterday, to the mods' surprise and delight, she accepted. "I've lurked here in the past," Pao wrote. "First time commenting. Still haven't posted." From there, the conversation turned to potato chips (Pao prefers Fritos), client apps (she uses Alien Blue for mobile redditing), and animal GIFs. "Someone sent me an awesome baby hedgehog gif yesterday, so that's on my mind today," Pao wrote in the thread. "The past few d …

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]]> Adi Robertson <![CDATA[Was Reddit always about free speech? Yes, and no]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/15/8964995/reddit-free-speech-history 2015-07-15T12:47:09-04:00 2015-07-15T12:47:09-04:00

Reddit is all about free speech. Or maybe it's not about free speech. Or maybe nobody knows what Reddit is about. Or maybe nobody knows what free speech is about. Reddit's management doesn't seem sure, and it's threatening to tear the site apart.

Yesterday, Reddit's incoming CEO and original co-founder Steve Huffman said he'd be holding a Q&A session over the site's content policy. Reddit is famously expansive in what it allows, but it's taken a very mild stand against harassment in the past months, which has created a firestorm over whether or not Reddit is truly in favor of free speech.

Huffman answered the central question bluntly in hi …

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]]> Adi Robertson <![CDATA[Interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao replaced by company co-founder Steve Huffman]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/10/8931017/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-steps-down 2015-07-10T17:22:39-04:00 2015-07-10T17:22:39-04:00

Ellen Pao, the interim CEO of Reddit who took over the site last year, has officially stepped down. "Ellen Pao resigned from Reddit today by mutual agreement. I'm delighted to announce that Steve Huffman, founder and the original Reddit CEO, is returning as CEO," said Reddit board member Sam Altman in a statement. Huffman co-founded Reddit with Alexis Ohanian, who left the company for a time before returning as executive chair. According to Altman, Ohanian will now work with Huffman under the title of "co-founder."

Altman reiterated promises that Pao made in an apology last week, promising better moderation tools and communication with the …

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]]> Adi Robertson <![CDATA[Welcome to Voat: Reddit killer, troll haven, and the strange face of internet free speech]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/10/8924415/voat-reddit-competitor-free-speech 2015-07-10T09:11:57-04:00 2015-07-10T09:11:57-04:00

Reddit's refugees are, by some accounts, the worst of an already bad lot. They're the people who deride any hint of anti-racism or anti-sexism as "social justice warrior" (or SJW) antics, believe that surreptitiously creepshotting teenage girls is a heroic use of free speech, and leave a site because banning five harassing boards with names like /r/FatPeopleHate is an unspeakable act of oppression. And there's one place that will take them in.

That place is called Voat, and the day I create my account, one of its more popular boards is dedicated to introductions. Almost every submission, including mine, draws at least a couple of friendly, …

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]]> Adi Robertson <![CDATA[Reddit mods defend Ask Me Anything blackout in The New York Times]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8913085/reddit-moderators-ama-shutdown-explanation 2015-07-08T12:40:29-04:00 2015-07-08T12:40:29-04:00

Two moderators of Reddit's popular Ask Me Anything subreddit have taken to The New York Times to explain a shutdown that sparked a nearly site-wide blackout last week. Brian Lynch and Courtnie Swearingen, a pair of attorneys who manage r/IAmA in their spare time, have previously said that they took the subreddit offline after the abrupt firing of employee Victoria Taylor. Taylor acted as a liaison between Reddit's volunteer moderators and the paid administrators, which included helping coordinate high-profile AMA visits - President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and any number of celebrities have appeared on the site.

"Dismissing Victoria Taylor …

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]]> Jacob Kastrenakes <![CDATA[Reddit is changing because it wants celebrities to visit more]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/6/8902535/reddit-overhauling-celebrity-relations-victoria-taylor 2015-07-06T17:30:11-04:00 2015-07-06T17:30:11-04:00

Reddit's removal of talent director Victoria Taylor sparked a community protest over the weekend, and now the site seems to be touching on some of the reasons why it let her go. In a comment, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian essentially writes that her dismissal is part of an overhaul to how Reddit will work with celebrities. Rather than occasionally helping celebrities conduct an hour-or-so question and answer session - which is what Taylor did in Reddit's AMA community - Ohanian says that Reddit now intends to help celebrities become "consistent posters … rather than one off occurrences." Ohanian says that Reddit will still help bring big …

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]]> Jacob Kastrenakes <![CDATA[Ellen Pao says ‘we screwed up’ and promises to make Reddit better]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/6/8901433/ellen-pao-apology-reddit 2015-07-06T14:44:02-04:00 2015-07-06T14:44:02-04:00

Reddit CEO Ellen Pao has written a note apologizing for the site's communication issues and longterm failure to deliver on promises made to its community. "We screwed up," she writes. "Not just on July 2nd, but also over the past several years."

"It will take time for us to deliver concrete results."

Though Pao doesn't entirely address the variety of issues that led to many sections of Reddit's community shutting down over the weekend, she does call out a series of changes being implemented to make the site a better place. That includes new tools for moderation and identifying Reddit employees who moderators can voice their concerns to. "We …

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]]> Dante D'Orazio <![CDATA[Nearly all major subreddits are back online following Reddit protests]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/4/8894409/reddit-protest-subreddits-back-online 2015-07-04T15:38:17-04:00 2015-07-04T15:38:17-04:00

Just a day after a massive revolt tore down parts of Reddit, the site now appears to be mostly back to normal. Most all major subreddits are back online after volunteer moderators (who run subreddits without direct control from the company) began setting hundreds of popular subreddits to private mode on Thursday and Friday, shutting out nearly all visitors.

The protests accomplished its goal - the uprising at Reddit gained international media attention, including articles from The New York Times, The Guardian, Time, and the BBC - and it appears moderators decided there was little benefit in continuing to keep their subreddits offline.

All 5 …

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