Steve Huffman

Not to be confused with Steve Hoffman.
Steve Huffman
Born (1983-11-12) November 12, 1983
Education Computer Science
Alma mater University of Virginia
Occupation CEO of Reddit

Steve Huffman (born November 12, 1983) is an American web developer, and both the original co-founder and current CEO of the social networking website Reddit.[1][2] More recently, he also participated in co-founding the airfare search-engine site Hipmunk.[3][4]

Career

Huffman is a graduate of Wakefield School in The Plains, Virginia. He attended the University of Virginia, where he majored in Computer Science.[5] After graduating, Huffman teamed up with classmate Alexis Ohanian to start Reddit, which was initially funded by Y Combinator.[5]

Reddit was later acquired by Condé Nast in 2006.[6]

In 2010, Huffman teamed up with Adam Goldstein to create the travel site Hipmunk, with funding also from Y Combinator.[3][4] In 2011, Huffman was named to Inc. magazine's 30 under 30 list.[7] Huffman is also the instructor for "CS253: Web Development", an e-learning course that began on April 2012 offered by online education provider Udacity.[8]

In 2014 Huffman said that his decision to sell Reddit had been a mistake, and that the site's growth had exceeded his expectations.[9] On July 10, 2015, after Ellen Pao's resignation, Huffman was appointed CEO of Reddit.[2]

Controversy

Shortly after being appointed CEO of Reddit in 2015, Huffman said that some controversial communities shouldn't be on Reddit, writing that "neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen."[10] Huffman later stated while Reddit had not been created as a "bastion of free speech," the concept "is important to us." Huffman later created new policies that would require users to opt-in to seeing some content, and blocking material that encourages "Systematic and/or continued actions to torment or demean someone."[11][12][13]

Trump Controversy

On November 23, 2016 a member of a subreddit dedicated to Donald Trump, r/the_donald, posted evidence indicating that Reddit administrators had modified multiple user comments inside the subreddit.[14] Following this post Huffman took responsibility for the comment modifications, writing that “Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won’t do this again.”[15][16] His administrative modifications involved changing one specific insulting phrase, in several comments, to make them appear as if the insults were directed toward the moderators of the subreddit instead of him.[17] In a Reddit post Huffman wrote that he "messed with" some of the comments but that he "restored the original comments after less than an hour."[18] On November 30, 2016, Huffman announced that sticky posts from r/The_Donald would no longer show up on r/all, stating that the community's moderators were abusing the feature in order to "slingshot posts into r/all, often in a manner that is antagonistic to the rest of the community."[19][20] When Huffman suggested that former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao lacked the knowledge to edit user comments, Pao responded "Yeah, there's no comparison. I would have immediately fired anyone who did that."[21]

References

  1. ↑ "Three Years After Their Acquisition, Reddit Founders Move On". Techcrunch. 2009-10-27.
  2. 1 2 Issac, Mike (July 10, 2015). "Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit's Chief". New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2015.
  3. 1 2 "About Hipmunk". Hipmunk. 2010-08-01.
  4. 1 2 Leena Rao (2010-08-01). "Reddit Co-Founder Dips Back Into Y Combinator With Travel Startup Hipmunk".
  5. 1 2 Zak Richards. "Unleashing High-Profile, High-Profit Websites".
  6. ↑ "Condé Nast/Wired Acquires Reddit". 2006-10-31.
  7. ↑ "Adam Goldstein and Steve Huffman, Founders of Hipmunk". Inc.com. 2011-06-27.
  8. ↑ "Udacity CS253 Web Application Engineering". 2012-04-01.
  9. ↑ Matthew Hall (10 Dec 2014). "'Atrocious, mobile sucks': Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman on what site has become". The Age.
  10. ↑ "New CEO: Some People on Reddit 'Shouldn't Be Here at All'". Re/Code. 14 Jul 2015.
  11. ↑ "Let's talk content. AMA. : announcements". reddit.
  12. ↑ "Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Is Cracking Down On Hateful Content". Fast Company.
  13. ↑ Trisha Thadani, USA TODAY (16 July 2015). "Reddit CEO to discuss site's values, policies in AMA today". USA TODAY.
  14. ↑ Menegus, Bryan (24 November 2016). "Reddit CEO Caught Secretly Editing User Comments, Chatlogs Leaked [Update]". Gizmodo. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
  15. ↑ Yeung, Ken. "Reddit CEO apologizes for editing comments critical of him following Pizzagate ban". VentureBeat. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
  16. ↑ Russell, Jon. "Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters". Techcrunch. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
  17. ↑ Weingerger, Matt. "The CEO of Reddit confessed to modifying posts from Trump supporters after they wouldn't stop sending him expletives". Business Insider. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
  18. ↑ Chaitin, Daniel (November 25, 2016). "Reddit CEO admits editing pro-Trump users' comments". Washington Examiner. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  19. ↑ Lecher, Colin. "Reddit will punish hundreds of 'toxic users' and hide some posts from pro-Trump community". The Verge. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
  20. ↑ Lee, Dave (November 30, 2016). "Reddit moves against 'toxic' Trump fans". BBC News. Retrieved December 1, 2016.
  21. ↑ Price, Rob (December 1, 2016). "Reddit is finally cracking down on its most abusive members after its CEO was targeted". Business Insider. Retrieved December 1, 2016.

External links

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