Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the Reddit platform and husband of Serena Williams, resigned from the board of directors on Friday to make way for a black man. He made his decision as part of the wave of mobilization against racism in the United States.
“It was time to do the right thing,” he said in a video posted to Twitter. The entrepreneur added that his future dividends on Reddit shares would be put to the service of the black community, in particular to “fight against racial hatred”.
He explains that he made this decision as a “father”, so that one day he could answer his daughter’s question when she asked him: “And you, what did you do?”.
The Reddit social network was founded 15 years ago as a large forum on the principle of unbridled freedom of expression, without safeguards. As social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tightened their hate content rules, part of the American far right has ended up on Reddit or 4chan.
Accused of not having acted
But for about two years, Reddit has been undertaking a major cleanup to get rid of so-called “toxic” groups and users.
According to the specialist media The Verge, the decision of Alexis Ohanian comes as moderators from certain large communities of the platform arrested Steve Huffman, the director and the other co-founder of Reddit, accusing him of not having acted against the racism and certain virulent communities, such as that of supporters of US President Donald Trump.
Steve Huffman said in a statement that the group would honor Alexis Ohanian’s request to replace him with a black person and that his teams were working to “change the rules on content that expresses explicit hatred”.
ats, dpa
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