Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigns, urges black board replacement
- Steve Huffman, co-founder and chief executive of Reddit, said the company would honour Ohanian’s request
- A pro-Trump message board on Reddit called The_Donald has been a continued source of tension for the site’s users
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the social news aggregation and discussion site Reddit, announced his resignation from its board of directors on Friday and called on the company to replace him with a black candidate.
Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world, has long been a source of controversy. Ohanian has an on-again, off-again relationship with the company. He stepped down from day-to-day work with Reddit in 2018, but had remained on its board.
“I believe resignation can actually be an act of leadership from people in power right now,” he wrote on Twitter. “To everyone fighting to fix our broken nation: do not stop.”
In a video, Ohanian said: “I’m saying this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks what did you do. So, I have resigned as a member of the Reddit board. I have urged them to fill my seat with a black candidate and I will use future gains on my Reddit stock to serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate.” He has a two-year-old daughter with his wife, tennis star Serena Williams.
A pro-Trump message board on Reddit called The_Donald has been a continued source of tension. Reddit’s former interim chief executive Ellen Pao publicly criticised the company this week.
In response to a post from the company about the Black Lives Matter movement, Pao wrote on Twitter: “I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don’t get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetises white supremacy and hate all day long.”