Ellen Pao's ouster shows Reddit CEO can't function under mob rule
Thomas Lee July 13, 2015 Updated: July 13, 2015 5:16 p.m.
Ellen Pao's ouster shows Reddit CEO can't function...
1of2Posters, toys and bobblehead dolls make Reddit's office feel warm and fuzzy. But online, not so much.Photo: Eric Johnson, Special to the Chronicle
2of2Enjoy it while you can, writes Thomas Lee. Ellen Pao may be gone, but the only thing the haters really accomplished is to further prove that Reddit has no future.Photo: Sam Wolson, Special to the Chronicle
Reddit users who successfully demanded Ellen Pao resign as interim CEO of the popular social news site are probably feeling mighty good about themselves right now.
Enjoy it while you can. Pao may be gone, but the only thing the haters really accomplished is to further prove that Reddit has no future — at least as the company currently exists.
Pao resigned last week amid a protest by Reddit fans angry over the company's decision to fire a popular executive. An online petition calling for Pao's ouster attracted over 200,000 signatures.
Trust me folks, anytime the masses, not a CEO or board of directors, determine important decisions at a for-profit company, it's not a good sign.
Because a company is not a democracy — nor should it be. We need pros to run a business, people who can make tough decisions based on intellect and strategy, not impulsive, raw emotion. If you want populist purity, there are always nonprofits like Wikipedia, Mozilla and Craigslist.
Reddit hardly fits that group. Condé Nast bought the site in 2006 and spun it out five years later as a mostly independent operating unit of the media giant.
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The company is reportedly valued at more than $200 million because advertisers know lots of people use it. Last month, Reddit attracted nearly 164 million unique visitors, besting other popular social media sites like Tumblr and Instagram.
Users, however, can't be calling the shots. Like any consumers, they are free to take their patronage elsewhere.
That's what the creators of Voat did. Angry at Reddit's efforts to rein in its worst trolls, a splinter group of users launched Voat in 2014 as a sort of utopic haven for free speech.
That's always been the problem with building a business model around social media. Social media users don't think of themselves as individual consumers but rather an entitled class of people powered by anonymity and numbers.
It's a bit of a paradox. As paying customers, we rightly expect a certain level of attention from businesses. Yet in social media circles, users demand more power even though they pay nothing.
In Reddit's case, the situation is even worse. The company depends not just on users but also on unpaid volunteers to moderate popular forums like Ask Me Anything.
And those volunteers weren't happy when Reddit suddenly dismissed director of talent Victoria Taylor. So in protest, the volunteers shut down hundreds of discussion areas called subreddits.
In hindsight, Pao, who apologized for not informing the moderators about Taylor, should have managed the situation better. And since moderators are no mere users and perform free work for Reddit, they deserve some deference.
But only some. They should not have the power to shut down the site whenever they feel like it.
Does anyone seriously think Taylor's dismissal is the only time the company will ever piss off the Reddit community? How can Reddit ever recruit top talent if the candidate knows his or her fate is ultimately determined by people who don't even work for the company?
And we still don't know why the company fired Taylor. Would the moderators still feel so self-righteous if Taylor did something truly awful?
Whatever moral high ground the moderators occupied was also lost when two of these volunteers wrote a sanctimonious essay for the New York Times last week explaining their actions.
"The issue goes beyond Reddit. We are concerned with what a move like this means for for-profit companies that depend on the free labor of volunteers — and whether they truly understand what makes an online community vibrant," wrote Brian Lynch and Courtnie Swearingen.
I would offer that the two volunteers don't understand how a free market works. If they aren't happy with Reddit's personnel moves, then resign. That's the beauty of being a volunteer — you can walk away from a job without any financial risk.
Instead they held the site hostage.
But here's my favorite part:
"Reddit is not our job, but we have spent thousands of hours as a team answering questions, facilitating A.M.A.s, writing policy and helping people ask questions of their heroes. We moderate from the train or bus, on breaks from work and in between classes. We check on the subreddit while standing in line at the grocery store or waiting at the D.M.V."
You would think Lynch and Swearingen were volunteering their time feeding the hungry or rescuing stray animals instead of moderating a message board.
But the volunteers do raise an important point. A for-profit company that depends on free labor is an unworkable contradiction.
Here's the ultimate irony: Condé Nast spun off Reddit with the hopes the site could grow faster on its own, but under the firm guidance of a board filled with veteran media executives like Condé Nast president Robert Sauerberg and Advance Publications executive vice president Andrew Siegel.
Still, Reddit seems just as dysfunctional as ever, which means Condé Naste needs to fundamentally rethink its approach to the business. My suggestions? Pay people to be moderators or sell the company and let someone else deal with this mess.
Either way, someone needs to tame the Reddit mob.
Thomas Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. E-mail: tlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByTomLee