Reddit’s former product chief Dan McComas made world ‘a worse place’

Dan McComas delivering a
TEDx talk in 2013.
TEDx/YouTube

• Former Reddit head of product Dan McComas told New York
  magazine that he believes his time at the internet forum “made
  the world a worse place.”
• McComas said a relentless pursuit of growth has led to
  user safety and wellbeing being sacrificed.
• He also criticised Twitter and Discord, and has “no
  hope” that these platforms can ever be free from
  abuse.

Former Reddit product head Dan McComas gave New York magazine a bracingly
honest account of his time at the internet forum.

McComas said growth trumped everything in Reddit board meetings,
even if it was harmful for Reddit’s community, which now sits at 330 monthly active users.

“The incentive structure is simply growth at all costs,” said
McComas, who worked at Reddit from 2009 to
2015, nine of months which were spent as head of product.

“There was never, in any board meeting that I have ever attended,
a conversation about the users, about things that were going on
that were bad, about potential dangers, about decisions that
might affect potential dangers.”

He added: “I fundamentally believe that my time at Reddit made
the world a worse place. And that sucks, and it sucks to have to
say that about myself.”

A memo from a Facebook executive expressing similar sentiments
about growth drew fire this year after it was leaked to BuzzFeed.
Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote that
any growth on Facebook is “de facto good,” even if it meant
people get hurt or killed.

McComas told the magazine it was Reddit’s dogged pursuit of
growth which forced his departure in 2015. According to the
former product chief, the attitude from executives and investors
led to abusive cultures forming on the platform. As a
consequence, he believes the site is beyond saving.

“I think that if you ask pretty much anybody about Reddit,
they’re either not going to know what Reddit is, which is the
large majority of people, or they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, it’s
that place where there’s jailbait or something like that.’ I
don’t think that they’re going to be able to turn these things
around,” he said.

Business Insider has contacted Reddit for comment.

Nasty subreddits that posed problems

McComas said a few particularly nasty subreddits posed a
consistent problem, and continue to do so. In particular, he
identified the “FatPeopleHate” and a group of animal cruelty
subreddits, “specifically with a sexual nature,” which management
refused to deal with.

“The arguments were usually, ‘We don’t want to touch this because
these are our most volatile users and they’ll just make things a
nightmare,” he said, adding that decisions weren’t reached unless
forced by pressure from the press.

“We would deal with the immediate impact, which was painful,
would last a week or two, and then it would go away. For the most
part, unfortunately, I see them still following this pattern.”

Similarly, he said the same toxicity that he saw proliferate on
Reddit can be seen on Twitter and Discord, a chat app designed
primarily for gamers.

“By focusing on growth and growth only and ignoring the problems,
they amassed a large set of cultural norms on their platforms.
Their cultural norms are different for every community, but they
tend to stem from harassment or abuse or bad behavior, and they
have worked themselves into a position where they’re completely
defensive and they can just never catch up on the problem.”

Twitter
CEO Jack Dorsey.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Images

Although Twitter has made efforts to keep its platform free from
abuse, McComas is sceptical. “I really don’t believe it’s
possible for either of them to catch up on the problem,” he said,
adding: “I don’t see any way that it’s going to improve. I have
no hope for either of those platforms. ”

McComas also said he talked to Discord CEO Jason Citron about the
problem of white supremacy on his platform.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to invade their privacy by going into
their channels and reading what they’re doing.’ And I said,
‘They’re gonna cause deaths because you’re not doing that.’ And
he said, ‘You really think so?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And sure
enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were
caused because of the shit going on in their channels.”

Discord was subpoenaed in August after white supremacists
used its app to organise the Charlottesville “Unite the Right”
rally, where counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed when James
Alex Fields drove a car into the crowd. Fields faces
charges of first-degree murder and hate crime.

After leaving Reddit McComas set up Imzy, a social media site
designed to be more compassionate. Imzy shut down in 2017, and he
thinks VCs weren’t ready for a different kind of social network.

“I think that the venture capitalists need to kind of reframe
their thinking on how these companies look as they start up and
grow. I know firsthand that at least the investors that I worked
with at Imzy are not ready to undertake that path. Imzy shut
down, we still had $8 million in the bank, and we had raised $11
million.”