Reddit Founder Resigns From Board, Pledging To Fight Racial Hate

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — In a surprise announcement Friday, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigned from the board of the $3 billion company he helped create 15 years ago, saying it was "long overdue" for him to do "the right thing."

In a post on his website, Ohanian urged Reddit to fill his seat with a black candidate. He also committed any future gains of his Reddit stock to serve the black community and curb racial hate.

Ohanian said he would begin with a $1 million pledge to Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp.

Ohanian, who is married to tennis star Serena Williams, said he made the decision "for me, for my family, and for my country."

"I’m writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: 'What did you do?'" he said. "I believe resignation can actually be an act of leadership from people in power right now. To everyone fighting to fix our broken nation: do not stop."

Ohanian's announcement comes just three days after former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao took to Twitter to call out CEO Steve Huffman for refusing to shut down a popular pro-Trump subreddit with nearly 800,000 members that's used for posting white supremacist and racist rhetoric.

Huffman responded by writing a letter to employees, saying the platform does not tolerate "hate, racism, and violence."

Users were not satisfied with the response. On Wednesday, several popular Reddit threads went dark to protest the company's failure to adequately deal with racist and hateful content on its platform, Business Insider reported.