Reddit’s interim CEO Ellen Pao (Photo : Reuters)
Reddit's interim CEO Ellen Pao said their apologies for the recent shutdown on hundreds of popular sections in Reddit's community. Pao said that they should have informed the community prior to the management's changes of the plan.
Hundreds of Reddit's popular section message boards were shut down by Reddit moderators on July 2, Thursday. The outages were caused by the apparent protests of users after the removal of a popular Reddit's director of talent and facilitator of the Ask Me Anything feature, Victoria Taylor. Pao did not make any comment on Taylor's departure.
There are nearly 300 individual discussion areas or sub Reddit from various topics ranging from technology to art that were affected by Reddit's move. Subreddits are moderated by the community members, not Reddit employees.
According to Time, one of Reddit's co-founder and current Chairman Alexis Ohanian, said that they already appointed a new point of contact. Kristine Fasnacht, a longtime Reddit user and the current employee is taking Taylor's role. Ohanian also admitted that they were wrong on not notifying the community about their plan.
Ohanian has a tight bond with the community, he said he spent 24 hours communicating with the site's moderators and other users, he also made about half a dozen phone calls to users. He also made sure that there is a moderator on the site in case there are users who has the question or wanted to talk.
Reddit is one of the highest trafficked sites on the internet. It has more than 160 million regular monthly visitors. AMA or Ask Me Anything is Reddit's piling question and answer sessions hosted and became very popular over the past few years. This section is being visited and participated by famous individuals like President Barack Obama in 2012, New York Times reported.
Pao and Ohanian confirmed that Reddit site is now back to normal. Out of 50 default sub Reddit, 48 are up and that is what most people see on the front page.
