![]() First, management maintained as close to a pure Free Speech policy as the law allowed, signaling trust in its community. ![]() That alignment had been manifested in a few ways. At the birth of Reddit, there was a remarkable alignment of business and community. Pao’s behavior confirmed to the Reddit culture that she was not, in the phrase redditors sometimes use, “One of us! One of us!” (The phrase comes from the cult movie Freaks redditors use it in a self-mocking way.) The alienation of management from its users was just about complete. When Pao eventually issued an apology, first under a smaller subreddit and eventually under the official communication channel, it was too little, too late. It was exactly like dismissing a work stoppage by the most active editors of Wikipedia on the grounds that they’re just a tiny percentage of overall users. As users quickly pointed out, most of the site’s content (and indeed, the vast majority of community-driven websites) is created by that tiny percentage, and mods put in an enormous amount of volunteer labor to keep the subreddits appealing. This angered the community even further, and not just because it seemed to imply that the protestors were not thoughtful. “Most of the community is made up of thoughtful people, and they can appreciate what we all do, even if we don’t always agree,” Ms. Pao says that the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal minority, and that the vast majority of Reddit users are uninterested in what unfolded over the past 48 hours. Worse, she dismissed the community’s concerns: Then, when moderators (“mods”) of many of the most popular subreddits shut down their sites to protest Victoria’s abrupt termination and subsequent lack of management communication, ex-interim CEO Ellen Pao took to mainstream media, rather than the platform she managed. First, it failed to recognize the vital role Victoria played in the community, and the repercussions her dismissal would have on that community. This is where RedditCo’s management went very wrong. An immensely popular employee, Victoria Taylor, was dismissed neither side is talking about why, although a common speculation was that Taylor objected to a rumored plan by Reddit’s management-what we’ll call “RedditCo”-to monetize the subreddit that Taylor facilitated. The precipitating cause of the Reddit Rebellion is itself a strong indication that the event should be understood first in cultural terms. Characterizing Reddit’s overall culture is difficult if only because each discussion board (“subreddit”) has its own flavor, but redditors’ pride in their community, and their identity as redditors, is undeniable. At its worst, it is demeaning and even hateful, all too often suffering from an assumed boy-ism that can create discomfort, or worse, for women and those deemed cultural outsiders. At its best it’s a remarkable and positive culture. Rather, it’s helpful to think of it not just as a community but as a culture that springs from a set of values and a form of discourse. It is often talked about as a community, but its scale-169M unique visitors a month-stretches that term. Rather, management needs to align itself deeply with the customers’ culture.Ĭulture is at the heart of Reddit. ![]() Because at Reddit the community is both customer and “product,” this requires much more than a blithe “The customer is always right” philosophy. Second, the Reddit turmoil should be understood first and foremost from the community’s perspective, not management’s. First, if there’s a significant difference between the culture and values of the business and the community, it will take more than a change in culture to fix it it may require changes in the organization and core processes. That helps explain why last week the users of, a popular message board, were up in arms.Ĭommunity-driven businesses should learn two important lessons from the Reddit rebellion. ![]() But the business does need to be fluent in the values and dynamics of its community, just as the airline’s CEO needs to understand that passengers should be treated differently than freight. A community-driven business doesn’t have to run itself the way its community does, any more than an airline’s backoffice should be run by two people in a cockpit.
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