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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

I am not convinced that community revolts have staying power. Reddit the community has fought management a few times and besides trading Pao for Huffman, which was not really a win for them in that case, when has anything ever changed?

So, does the heat matter?

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Generally the revolts have achieved their ends. Mod revolts have lead to the banning of many subs in the past. The most recent one that comes to mind is the ban on COVID skepticism subs. I can't think of a result that has wholly flopped, really. But I'd say that this one is more likely to fail since it represents a direct attack on a monetization strategy.

Banning COVID skepticism is commercially pretty easy, so while yes the Reddit revolters did win in that case, it was also a small ask as it was not like advertisers liked the content anyway.

I was thinking more of Victoria Taylor, where sure, the community did get rid of Ellen Pao, but they didn't get back AMAs and got an even less considerate and professional CEO.

> Banning COVID skepticism is commercially pretty easy

That wasn’t “skepticism” - it was outright denial of high-school-level biology facts, and it all gets worse from there.

> commercially pretty easy

I doubt it’s that easy - considering Facebook’s inaction.

Reddit was born of Digg's ashes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg

"After a controversial 2010 redesign and the departure of co-founders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, in July 2012 Digg was sold in three parts: the Digg brand, website, and technology were sold to Betaworks for an estimated $500,000;[9] 15 staff were transferred to The Washington Post Company's "SocialCode" for a reported $12 million; and a suite of patents was sold to LinkedIn for about $4 million."

Huffman is a clear downgrade. Pao was fine.

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