Analysis: ‘Reddit Revolt’ that led to Ellen Pao’s resignation is bad news for the Internet

Interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao stepped down yesterday, following a week that saw the online community’s users call for her head on a pike after the controversial firing of a well-liked employee. It’s been called the “Reddit Revolt,” and it bodes poorly for the future of the Internet. So far this year, we’ve gone through the hype cycles for the Apple Watch, Apple Music, Microsoft HoloLens, a new version of Google Android, and a bunch of other products. But products are ephemeral. Just wait for the Apple Watch 2.  But the Reddit Revolt is a whole different animal, and speaks to a whole mess of problems that are only going to get worse and worse as the Internet encroaches on the real world.

In my eight months as reddit’s CEO, 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.

Out-going Reddit boss Ellen Pao

The Internet — like any other community — can be a very unfriendly place. And now that more and more people are getting online, they’re finding this fact out for themselves. And we’re going to keep having the debates that led to the Reddit Revolt in the first place: What constitutes harassment? What are the limits of free speech? At what point do you deserve to have your voice silenced?  The team at Reddit has been thinking about these problems for a long time, and has a smart team in place whose job it is to literally think about these things. And they, hopefully, know better than anybody else that their platform is transient. If Reddit can’t figure out the right balance between freedom of speech and good manners, between freedom of speech and freedom to be heard, here and now, there’s little hope that anybody can.

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