Alexis Ohanian on Life After Reddit

24:19Like dads feel that too? Dads feel it too. And that was probably the best part about, there were lots of great things about becoming a father. But one of my favorites was getting to know men who I already really respected, wildly successful in so many industries, who then let me into this club once I became a father. And they started to tell me about the good times, the bad times. And I'm like, guys, this has been on your minds the whole time and you only talk to other dads about it. This conversation needs to get normalized. So young men, before we even think about having a family, are seeing this other path to excellence that is, yes, career-driven as all hell, but also aware of the fact that probably the best thing I'll ever do is going to be these little humans that I helped bring into the world and raise.

25:02And so I like seeing that. There's definitely been a shift now in the meta, I feel like, in the last five years and, you know, trying to do it all like everybody. Trying to do it all. So let's talk about Dig. Yes. Are you trying to make money? Are you trying to take on TikTok? What's the vision? Who's the competition? Who is the competition for Dig? Well, you know, Kevin Rose and I used to be arch nemesis CEOs back in the day reddit versus dig i hated his guts i hated his guts i had a gif of kevin rose at a dignation event someone had thrown a reddit t-shirt on stage he picked it up he held it to the crowd they booed and he blew his nose on the shirt and threw it to the side and i used to watch this clip probably once or twice a week and i have a folder i may still have it a dropbox folder where i would have all these things that just called it my wall of negative reinforcement.

25:57I had a literal wall when we were starting Reddit, right? Like when the Yahoo executive called us a rounding error, I put that on my wall. So every day when I went to the office, I could see this guy, you're a rounding error. I won't name him. He's still in tech. And it would motivate me. And then of course, the day that Reddit surpassed Yahoo in traffic, I was like, all right, we'll see. Rounding error. And so with Kevin, it was an innocuous thing. It wasn't like he, but he did this and it was so important to me because whenever I felt like a little tired, I felt like, I don't really want to do this thing I got to do, man.

26:26I watched that clip and I remembered why I needed to prove him wrong. And so it was great. We buried Dig and I felt like great victory. Awesome. But I never actually met Kevin. And on some level, look, Dig was first. Honest to God, I did not know about it. Neither of us did. I still have the email where I learned about it. And I sent an email to Paul Graham and I was like, oh, we have a competitor. It's called Dig. This was probably six to nine months after Dig had launched. So they were first. And I finally met him. This was now years later. It was probably four or five years ago, maybe six years ago.

27:01And we absolutely hit it off. And I thought to myself, God, why did this take so long? He's a girl dad. I'm a girl dad. We thought about the world in much the same way. We were building basically the same company at the same time with a similar view on community and product and all this stuff. And if I'm being honest with myself, part of the reason I hated him was this kind of like jealousy and a competitive spirit. And there was probably I saw a version of me in him and he was getting things I didn't get. Remember, they were, you know, venture funded front of magazines. They were they were the king.

27:33They were the champions. We were the sort of runty other company for five, six years. And so as I more understood where that jealousy came from and how that jealousy was really rooted in respect. And then I came to realize, like, I actually love this guy. He's great. God, it changed everything. And so, yeah, he told me he was buying back the domain. And I said, Kevin, this is a great idea. Can I do this with you? And so. So is the goal to make money or to get over your jealousy? Oh, no, no, we're buddies now. I got over that. But remember, I have a wall of negative reinforcement. So the idea that we could build a platform in the AI age that has all the community tools that we know could be better with AI.

28:14So imagine a moderator's job is not 90 % garbage and 10 % community management, but actually 90 % community management and 10 % sort of garbage collection. AI is what enables that. Those tools help scale the work of the moderators that on most of these platforms spend a lot of their time doing like digital grunt work. That's not satisfying. And then also in this age of AI, can we build a community platform that is authentically human? People are realizing now just how much of our social feeds are fake. I mean, it's striking. I'd say at a minimum, it's a third. I think with dead internet theory, I really, it could be as much as half are in some way compromised.

28:54And so that could be outright a bot. That could be a human posting AI generated content sort of at scale. That could be an account that gets purchased in order to have the moderator rights in a community. And so what do you do in an age where, you know, because of AI, we are going to become more and more skeptical of every interaction we have? How do you reimagine a community first platform where you have verifiable humans without saying, oh, hey, you know, scan your retina? And so I think Dig can be that. And then, yeah, on a personal level, I would love nothing more than to see if we could do it again.

29:31Again or better? Both. I mean, how many founders get the chance to run it back in a similar product, in a similar market? I mean, you talk about Palmer is definitely one of them. There's a short list of folks who have done that, and it would be a lot of fun. It'd be a lot of fun to do. If the engine of virality is extremism and Dig is supposed to be the antidote, how do you drive engagement? I think what we found in authentic human online community is it's the last bastion of really high quality content. And right now, I don't think, actually, I think most of it goes down in the group chats. I think that's where most of that happens today.

30:15And so whether you want to know an opinion about a movie, whether you want to know about a camera to buy, there is always going to be real, real value there. as long as you can curate a space that people believe is authentic and human. And Lord knows we know the LLMs will pay money for that content because they know how valuable that is to train on. But what I worry about is there is this flywheel of, if we know these models are trained on content that are now largely botted or AI generated, that authenticity loop breaks down real quick and that trust breaks down real quick. And so I think we will need to find repositories of real community that are verifiable and engaging.

30:55And I think the reason why people will want to come back to them is because you'll be surrounded by so much noise and so much slop. And the stopgap right now is in the group chats, but that's clearly not where it ends. There clearly needs to be some other version of, you know, if you just want to show up and find a community of people who love cameras, where do you go to get authentic, real human reviews of those things? The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut.

31:31Impact politics. Change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Reddit is actually one of the oldest social media companies because it was founded in 2005. Pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram, after Facebook. Pre-Snap? Pre-Snap, yeah. What do you make of how far Reddit has come and how much work there still is to do? Oh, I'm in. This is the, startups are the infinite game. It's not a startup anymore.

32:09That's true. So, uh, I think there is, look, I think everyone's playing an infinite game here. I'll put it this way. In the 776 portfolio, we have companies a year or two ago that we've had to have the hard talk with the CEO and say, look, your company was founded literally just two and a half years ago, let's say. And you're a pre-AI company. Your DNA, it's a software company, but your DNA is from an era before we sort of normalized writing code with some sort of AI assistants, the speed at which you ship, the way in which you build is from this bygone era. And that was just a few years ago. So imagine any pure software company older than that.

32:55That is a massive shift in how you work in order to keep up with the modern era. And so I think any company, especially one a couple of decades old, is facing some kind of existential threat or some kind of question that they need to ask themselves, which is, can this company be refounded as the type of company that moves like a company does today? Today, we meet founders. It's a group of people that can sit around a box of pizza, and they're able to get to tens of millions in revenue. And soon, they'll get to hundreds of millions in revenue. And these are the outliers, but it's undeniable that this sort of Navy SEALs of software development, the small, cracked team, is going to be able to punch way above their weight in this new era.

33:37And so it's very hard for the incumbents to adapt. We'll see. I think some will, but my gut is a lot of them won't. And it'll be fun to see how that unfolds. A lot was made of the fact that you weren't at the IPO. Was it? Yes. Really? Why weren't you there? It was so funny. I was just asking. I was like, I personally don't feel like it was a thing. Why wasn't I there? Well, I wasn't invited. I did not expect to be invited though, given the fact that I resigned in protest in 2020. You know, that was a very public statement in order to get the company to finally ban some of these communities. I'd already had opposition about communities like watch people die and some of these really violent and racist communities.

34:20And yeah, you know, that was the way to get the change. The good news is it got it done. Those communities got banned and I think it made the business better, which was good. It was certainly better for society, in my opinion, but yeah, it didn't get the invite. But the good news is... So there is some bad blood or hurt feelings or bruised egos? Not for me. But here's the thing. The way I look at it, I've got plenty more IPOs to go to. So it just wasn't this one. And we did talk at the time, but why leave rather than lean in to fix what was broken? Well, when you're in a boardroom, especially when you've been like the founder and face of a company for 15 years, you're in a boardroom with four other people and they're all telling you why the watch people die community is an important part of reddit and why we need to preserve that community in spite of your protests because of free speech and because of how helpful it is for first responders whatever when you come out of a board meeting like that and you go home to your wife as i did and i'm saying, like, God, am I the crazy one?

35:29Like, am I wrong on this? Because like, I know this community is full of snuff videos, suicide videos, murder videos, mostly of people in the developing world, because that's how that video footage gets leaked out. And there are millions of people on Reddit who come to this and discuss it and share and bond. And that feels vile. That feels wrong. It's not something I'm proud of. I don't think it's a good thing for the business. I don't think it's a good thing for the community. I don't think it's a good thing for society. I'm trying to steel man this and the best argument I'm hearing back is, well, it's important for free speech and it'll help people who have lived in war zones.

36:04And I'm like, I don't think that's real. But when you're told, you know, and the room is very obviously against you and told, no, no, no, it's don't worry about it. You're wrong. It was a weird, very surreal experience. And so when you can't convince a board of four other people that the thing you've spent your life building shouldn't have a community that feeds millions of people content of people dying on camera, you know, you've got an uphill battle, right? You have a different set of values. And then the really eyeopening thing was, you know, it's, it's one thing to have values. It's another one.

36:48Those get tested because I think if held up to public scrutiny, the response public was the same one, which was, well, this is an important free speech issue, et cetera, we're going to stick with it. I would have disagreed, but I would have respected the intellectual consistency. And instead, when the Christchurch shooting happened and the media found out about watch people die, what was the response? We're banning violence. These communities shouldn't be here. That flipped the switch for me because now I'm coming home to dinner. I'm like, so I wasn't crazy. I wasn't wrong. It's just no one had the spine to do something about it.

37:25And so now, you know, a month or two goes by. And again, on the surface, you're publicly as a company saying, we stand in solidarity with Black Lives. We're changing our logo. We're writing a blog post. And again, I'm having this conversation with members of the board. There are thousands of communities here. I literally cannot name because of the words in their name. They are so racist and vile. And these are active communities. These are not one-off posts. These are active communities normalizing, hey, I can't reconcile a company that publicly is saying, we're not about this, but literally harboring these communities.

38:07And so I took a lesson from Christchurch and the Watch People Die community where what it took was a spotlight. What it took was sunlight. And so in that resignation, I could make public my request to have these vile, racist, violent communities banned, have myself replaced by a director of color and say, you know what? I'm out. But hopefully this finally gets the change. Yeah. And the greatest blessing has been in the last five years since, my God, to have had the success that I've had, I am so lucky in industry after industry, and industry is where I didn't belong five years ago, to show up and make such headway, have such success, and forget the money and the accolades, to be this effective and in a way that aligns with values that I know when my little girl grows up and she asks, Papa, how'd you make all this money?

39:03I can tell her and feel so good about it. God, it feels good. And so, you know, there is a part of me that probably thinks, maybe I should have done it sooner. Maybe I should have left sooner. But more importantly, maybe I should make sure that I'm never again in a room with four other people that see the world so fundamentally differently than I do. And, you know, Serena clocked it real quick. She was like, no, those people are crazy. Watch people die as a horrible community and you're absolutely right. And thank God I had one person in my life who at least was able to call that. And it just gave me a perspective.

39:39And I feel, like I said, I feel very fortunate that I'm never going to have to be in a room like that again. You were at the forefront of defending Section 230 at one point. Do you feel differently now about content and platforms and accountability? Not at all. I think Section 230 exists in this same world, right? You can want Section 230 and also say, I like to use the analogy of like, a platform like Reddit is like a digital Javits Center, since we're here in New York. You're a private company that is hosting this infinite convention hall. And so you make the choice. Oh, hey, we got the Pokemon convention over here.

40:13We have the Yankees conference over here. We have the watch people die conference over here. Like you're making an active choice around the communities that you harbor as a private business. And you have the right to say, no, sorry, KKK. We actually don't want you here because over here, we're just trying to enjoy Pokemon. And so Section 230 is an important issue because it protects platforms on the individual basis of the stuff that gets posted. And that's like the random person walking into the Pokemon convention hall saying something toxic. That's different from, hey, we actually are hosting the KKK here in our convention center.

40:47Tech's shift to the right. How do you feel when you see tech CEOs who used to say and do one thing saying and doing something different now? Well, I just told you that last story, right? having values only really matter when they get tested so unfortunately it's not surprising i do think i actually okay is it disappointing you can't be disappointed after the stuff i've seen you can't get disappointed the bar is low i mean again i watch people die please judge for yourselves how important for society and business that is okay so what do i think i really believe that, and maybe I'm just a masochist, I think having this culture shift, I actually appreciate it in that it's a test for my own values.

41:36It wouldn't feel very good if the things I believed flapped so effortlessly in the political winds. I think there are issues in tech's shift to the right that I actually agree with. This is by no means a monolith. There are certain things that I think have been a good shift. But I do think overall, yeah, with this vibe shift, if you will, it makes it even more important for me to say the things I'm going to say, especially from the position of power that I have. And so, like I said, if I have, I think, 10 million people, like I said, saying, I mean, some just vile stuff about me on Twitter, because I tell the story of my mom who was an undocumented immigrant, fine.

42:15I would rather have that statement in the public record. And I know that there are millions more people who actually would read what I have to say and be like, that's fairly reasonable policy. And I'd rather use the platform I have to say those things. And again, continue to be tested by the fact that, you know, if I had tweeted that five years ago, it wouldn't have certainly met that level of toxicity and criticism. So I think it's a great test of what one believes to be able to say those things in an environment where you have people saying awful stuff back to you. But I don't know, that stuff doesn't affect me too much.

42:50You have daughters, but it's also a tough moment for raising sons. Yeah, extremely. And kids are being pushed to the margins across the board. Does that worry you? I actually care more about the plight of young boys because, look, in all likelihood, those are the guys that my daughters are going to have to choose from as partners, right? As life partners. I'm going to raise some kick-ass girls. I need awesome young men for them to couple up with, Right. And so I think in the pursuit of elevating young girls and women, we forgot or we in some cases push down creating those pathways for young boys.

43:26And again, I statistically, my daughters are probably going to want guys in their lives who are great, too, who are self-assured, who are capable, who are confident, who are able to do all these things and be high functioning contributors to society. And so we should want that, even as girl dads. And so I do think now that you have this tonal shift back, so there's more awareness of the plight of young boys, well, young men in particular, also at a time when I think there's enough data to show that in any population, having young men feeling hopeless and helpless is very bad for society. Young women, it's also not good if young women feel that way, but they tend to take out that marginalization in less toxic ways than men do.

44:07So I think we have a societal imperative to do more for these young men, especially at a time when you have many in a generation feeling like they're going to do worse than their parents. And when they are feeling all these, I think, very valid concerns. And again, you can, I guess, kind of blame me for this. The conversation on social media has just, it rewards the most extreme because it's either one side playing to their base or the other side antagonizing the other. And it seems like the generation coming up now, Gen Z, has run its course with social media. They're looking for alternatives.

44:40They don't want to see their self-worth measured in followers like millennials. And I hope that gives rise to some other opportunities to actually communicate and share ideas. But that's a big one. We seem to be going all in on this narrative that tech's going to just make our lives better. And yet at the same time barreling towards a future where we have less interpersonal skills, less jobs. jobs, people can't focus on multiple things at one time. Like, is it reasonable to leave that tech, which got us here, will get us out? I think so. And I think so, one, because I'm just a tech optimist, so I can't help that.

45:14I do think we have to build our way out of it. We talk about this a lot internally, too. The skills that I want to make sure my kids have, and I hope our education system builds up in a whole generation of kids as well, are a lot of the things that make us more human. So those interpersonal skills, the public speaking skills, the empathy, the creativity, like raw horsepower intelligence is now commoditized, which is great news for students like me. Like I said, it was a good student. It's not a great student. I really hope this is going to take a much bigger shift, but I really hope, I mean, I think Alpha School is a great example as we can start elevating those softer skills, those interpersonal skills actually in the school day so that those are the things kids are spending time doing.

45:55And if they can spend an hour having an AI tutor help them through all the fundamentals in what would have taken a human teacher hours and hours and hours and tons of bullshit homework and all this stuff. I think that's a huge win for all of us. And so I'm still hopeful. And yes, there's all the memes of what is it? The Gen Z stare. I'm really showing my age now. But there's, there's, what's the Gen Z stare? It's like a, it's like a blank stare. It's like a whole thing. And so the good news is for that generation, Any of the young people who are not wired that way have a huge advantage. They're going to be head and shoulders above their peers when it comes to competition in terms of building companies or even working or all that stuff.

46:34But the cultures adapt quickly. I think technology overall is still a force for good. And I think part of, unfortunately, what it requires is the pendulum to shift far enough that enough people are like, yo, this is broken. Like, it needs to shift back. Are kids' best friends going to be AIs, though? And I know you and— Some will be. I know you and Olympia spend a lot of time on ChatGPT. We do. And I want her to be exposed. And that's with parental supervision. But we'll do like a big question. And I'll force her every night. Some nights she really doesn't want to do it. And she'll just look at the salt shaker and be like, where does salt come from?

47:08I'm like, Olympia, you were not thinking about this question all day long. Like you just looked at the salt and just want to get through it. But it's fine. We do a lesson on salt and fine. And so ChatGPT ends up becoming this brilliant, always on tutor that can help explain stuff. But I want her to see it as a tool, not as a friend. I do think, realistically, some portion of the population will probably opt into these AI relationships. And if I were to ballpark it, maybe 10 % or 20%. I mean, there's always that story that goes viral. There's that married guy who's in love with an AI, and he has a wife and a child.

47:42And the wife and child are like, yeah, he's in love with his AI. And that, for sure, is not a healthy thing. but I think if we talk to Sam Altman about this or any of those folks, they're all going to say, well, you know, users still need to use these tools as they see fit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think realistically 10 or 20 % of the population will have some deep affection for an AI. Now, how different is that from a deep video game addiction or a deep whatever? Like I think it's a cousin of other things that our society has that's just found a new outlet. And then I think for 80 % of the population, it's a resource.

48:18In the best cases, the way I've used it personally is as a kind of executive coach to be able to give me, and you really got to tell OpenAI to give it to you 100. Don't be a sycophant. Give it to me real. But to give you feedback and give you this real-time feedback loop on how you handle maybe a conversation or an email or just be a thought partner, I think that will be widespread. I think it'll be wonderfully healthy. I think it'll be a good thing. It'll help us be more effective. And then I do think from a career job standpoint, for sure, there will be a lot of change. My sister, who's an RN, she asked me this for the last like 10 years.

48:51She's like, have you built a company yet to put me out of business? And I'm like, you will never not have a job. You're a nurse. You are a superhero. And the work that you do is so physically unique, creative, empathetic, strategic. Like it's the last, the last thing that we'll build a robot to do. But there are plenty of jobs that are going to be changed, upended, but I do think there's no limit to human ambition. Just like one of the biggest jobs in the world, the kids aspire to today in the United States is being a YouTuber or a creator. Thanks to, you know, shout out Mr. Beast, seven, seven, six founder is this idea that didn't exist 15, 20 years ago or not really, certainly not 30 years ago.

49:29And so, yes, there'll be careers and jobs that don't exist today. They exist in the future that are thrilling and exciting and pay you. And then, look, let's get spacefaring. You know, there is no shortage of ambition. You think we should go to space? Look, like I said, early check in Stoke. It's a reusable rocket company. I think there is a very significant importance for all of us on Earth to be very good at space, certainly as Americans, from even just a defense standpoint. It's really important for us to be there and have a big presence. And while I look to invest in space tech, first and foremost, to benefit us on Earth, love Earth, want it to be around for a long time, want us to thrive here.

50:10I also know that as we continue to, I do think, improve things long-term on Earth, I don't hate the fact that we can become a space-faring civilization. I don't hate the fact that we could have, maybe not my daughters, but like granddaughters, grandsons, wanting to pursue things outside of this world. That's dope to me. That sounds great. But not in lieu of Earth. Earth is still plan A. Really care about it. So there's hope for 80 to 90 % of us. Yes. If I'm being realistic. Well, yeah. No, we still have to save this planet. We still have to save this planet, for sure. Even NASA has shown so much innovation that we help use here terrestrially.

50:47And I don't doubt there'll be 100 times more from the private space endeavors that are happening now that'll help us here on Earth. Reddit said in a statement that it was widely agreed upon to ban watch people die in 2019. and that 2 ,000 other communities were banned for violating Reddit's policy on hateful content in 2020, the year Ohanian left the company. Reddit said Ohanian and the company's board of directors did not play a role in the decision to ban watch people die and that, quote, Policy decisions at Reddit are made cross-functionally between our safety, policy, legal, and other teams.

51:20Reddit is committed to the safety of our platform and the health of our community, which is why we have a long track record of strengthening our site-wide rules. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Circuit. Check out the full episode to see how Alexis Ohanian is creating a new sports league and making a big bet on the fastest women on the planet. I'm Emily Chang. You can follow me on X and Instagram at EmilyChangTV. You can watch new episodes of The Circuit on Bloomberg Television, on YouTube, or on demand by downloading the Bloomberg app to your smart TV. And check out other Bloomberg podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your shows.

51:56and let us know what you think by leaving a review. I'm your host and executive producer. Our senior producer is Lauren Ellis. Our producer is Rob Muraskin. Our editor is Gramercy Post. Thanks so much for listening. Watch new episodes of The Circuit on Bloomberg Originals.

52:16The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics. Change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.