Does Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have regrets over his creation? The entrepreneur and founder of venture fund Seven Seven Six, speaking at an event at the University of Virginia, espoused a fairly negative view of the current social media landscape and the creator economy — an environment where he says, everyone has “been so trained and conditioned now to just get the likes and retweets, get the upvotes…I wish I could be more optimistic about it, but we’re seeing it play out before our eyes.” Still, he ultimately described himself as a “techno-optimist” — an apparent nod to a16z General Partner Marc Andreessen’s recent diatribe where he claimed technology could solve all our problems.
“Guilty as charged,” Ohanian said, during his interview with Kara Swisher. “I do think that pendulum will swing back. I think even swifter than we realize.” The war in the Middle East may even be the tipping point, he theorized, as it’s now “abundantly clear” that we need something better to figure out the world than the platforms we have today.
The founder, as you may recall, notably resigned from Reddit’s board in 2020 over differences of opinion on moderation and wanting to crack down on communities about violence and hate. It was a moment where he seemed to be reckoning with what his platform had wrought. At the time, he asked for his board seat to be replaced by a Black board member. The company agreed, appointing its first Black board member with Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel.
Reddit also later banned several toxic communities, including r/donaldtrup following violence at the U.S. Capitol, and Ohanian says that the site has “gotten demonstrably better,” since, as well as better as a business.
But as for social media as a whole, of which Reddit would presumably play a part, Ohanian said it brings out the “worst parts of our nature in many ways.” What’s more, he expressed worries about the desire for people to be first and win on whatever leaderboard a platform features, which then leads to a situation where misinformation is able to spread.
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