CEO of Reddit Ellen Pao Forced To Resign

July 31, 2015

redditEllen Pao served as the interim CEO of Reddit, one of the most popular social media websites in the world which is responsible for generating massive amounts of traffic on a daily basis. Pao had a controversial 8 month tenure and her biggest mistake in retrospect was terminating Victoria Taylor, Reddit’s talent director.

Taylor was responsible for hiring hundreds of moderators and volunteers for Reddit who were responsible for moderating and managing over 10,000 subreddits or discussion boards. They moderators had a strong relationship with Taylor and when they found out that she had been terminated by Pao, they decided to collectively take action and shutdown hundreds of subreddits that they were responsible for. They also decided to use the change.org website and file a social petition for Pao to step down and got as many as two hundred thousand signatures calling for the resignation of Pao.

Reddit brings in more than 164 million visitors per month and the moderators are responsible for creating interest and generating content that brings in these visitors. With their revolt, the pressure was placed directly on Pao who ended up apologizing to the community by saying ‘We screwed up’.

However, the moderators kept putting pressure on Pao till she decided to step down. In a statement, Pao said “I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on reddit. The good has been off-the-wall inspiring, and the ugly made me doubt humanity.” Pao is expected to be replaced by Reditt co-founder Steve Huffman.