Reddit CEO Ellen Pao Issues Apology After Firing Of ‘Ask Me Anything’ Coordinator

If you ask some Redditors how they feel about interim CEO Ellen Pao they'll tell you the boss has a censorship issue. Since coming in Pao shut down several subreddits she deemed offensive and last week, the sites users were up in arms when Pao let go of one of its top executives Victoria Taylor. Taylor coordinated the popular Ask Me Anything series and once again, petitions went out calling for Pao's resignation. After the latest petition was signed by over 200,000 users, Pao issued a formal apology.

Pao made the apology on the Reddit post We Apologize.

"We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years. We haven't communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes," Pao wrote. "We have apologized and made promises to you, the moderators and the community, over many years, but time and again, we haven't delivered on them. When you've had feedback or requests, we haven't always been responsive. The mods and the community have lost trust in me and in us, the administrators of reddit."

In the statement, Pao promised to improve on tools and not just promise improvements. Two of its top moderators u/deimorz and u/weffey, will be working as a team to decide what tools need to be built and how they will be delivered to users. The moderator u/krispykrackers will be in constant contact with moderators and she'll figure out the best method to talk to Redditors more often.

This will be a part of a Reddit-wide effort to communicate with the entire site more effectively. "I know these are just words, and it may be hard for you to believe us," Pao continued. "I don't have all the answers, and it will take time for us to deliver concrete results. I mean it when I say we screwed up, and we want to have a meaningful ongoing discussion."