Behind Steve Huffman's return to Reddit as CEO following the moderator revolt and Ellen Pao's departure
Inside Reddit's Plan to Recover From Its Epic Meltdown — It began on the Thursday night that much of Reddit—the eleventh biggest site on the American Internet …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Wired piece lands three months after Ellen Pao was ousted as Reddit CEO, with co-founder and original chief executive Steve Huffman taking over immediately while Pao stayed on as a board adviser through end of 2015. The trigger was a moderator revolt that disrupted much of the site, and board member Sam Altman broke the news himself in an AMA announcing the resignation.
What makes the story worth revisiting is the arc that followed: within a year sources told TechCrunch the remake under Huffman and Alexis Ohanian was faltering as key employees departed, yet the NYT later credited the same return with growing Reddit from $12M to over $800M in annual revenue.
First-order effects
- Reddit gets an acting founder-CEO mid-crisis: Huffman inherits a moderator base in open revolt and a staff shaken by Pao's departure, with Pao still advising the board through December 2015.
Second-order effects
- Retention becomes the immediate battleground — the exodus of key employees reported in 2016 shows the leadership change bought time with moderators but strained the team tasked with remaking the product.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, community-platform crises increasingly resolve through founder re-entry paired with negotiated peace with volunteer moderators rather than pure top-down control — the structure that, per the NYT account, carried Huffman's Reddit from 80 staff and $12M revenue toward 2,000 staff and $800M+.
The trend: Community-governed platforms are learning that leadership crises end only when founders return and strike terms with the volunteer moderators who actually run the product.