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Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder and former CEO of Reddit on Friday stepped down from his position on the Reddit board of director’s urging the company to hire a black candidate in his place maid the ongoing protests in the United States.
The former Reddit CEO has also promised to donate his future gains on the company stock to serve the black community.
“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, and I’m starting with a pledge of $1M to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp,” Ohanian said in an official statement.
“I co-founded Reddit 15 years ago to help people find community and a sense of belonging. It is long overdue to do the right thing. I’m doing this for me, for my family, and my country,” he said.
The move comes in light of the ongoing protests in the US against racial discrimination and police brutality after the death of a black man Geroge Floyd who dies in police custody. The four officers of the Minneapolis police department have been charged in the case.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed his request in a Reddit post while detailing the company’s policy related to the existing issue of content related to racial discrimination on the social media platform.
“We’re working with mods to change our content policy to explicitly address hate. u/kn0thing (Ohanian) has resigned from our board to fill his seat with a Black candidate, a request we will honor. I want to take responsibility for the history of our policies over the years that got us here, and we still have work to do,” Huffman wrote.
He also acknowledged employees’ concerns related to the platform’s policy decisions in response to an email he sent out about ongoing protests.
“These questions, which I know are coming from a place of real pain and which I take to heart, are really a statement: There is an unacceptable gap between our beliefs as people and a company, and what you see in our content policy,” Huffman wrote.
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