Patrick McKendry

Reddit, the social media news aggregation and discussion site, has long referred to itself as the “front page of the internet”. In recent weeks, amidst a constantly evolving moderator protest the site itself has become front page news. Founded in 2005, Reddit is comprised of a vast network of community forums - known as sub-reddits - that give users a place to find and discuss topics with like-minded people. Central to operations is a volunteer-team of moderators, each of whom owns 1 of nearly 9,000 sub-reddits and manages content and users with a high degree of autonomy while staying within Reddit’s moderator rules and guidelines.

In the cross-hairs of moderator ire is the push for new API pricing as Reddit CEO Steve Huffman looks to add new revenue streams prior to taking the company public later this year. The move is seen, in equal parts, as a defensive one to prevent tech giants like Google and OpenAI from training their AI tools on Reddit data at no cost.¹ However, caught in the cross-fire of these API pricing changes are 3rd-party app developers who build tools to help moderators manage their communities and that increase the usability of Reddit’s infamously janky interface. Popular apps, such as Apollo, have announced they will need to shut down in the face of API fees north of $20 million annually on the new pricing model.¹

The very public fight between Reddit’s corporate and volunteer teams began on June 12, as moderators took their forums private and offline for 2-days in an effort to start conversations with Reddit executives.² Since then, the majority have come back online after threat of moderator removal by Reddit. But many have found creative ways to protest while staying within content guidelines, such as encouraging users to post exclusively photos of John Oliver or banning posts that contain the letter “k”.³ Many moderators are also relaxing all but the required site-wide moderation rules, citing the loss of 3rd-party app support for handling moderation. Huffman contends that the protests are the result of a small group of very upset moderators. In turn, moderators have launched polls about the changes to highlight the widespread disdain for the new rules.³

Huffman has noted that the protests are a “uniquely Reddit moment.”¹ He’s right. From the beginning, the platform has been seen as off-beat and anti-establishment.⁴ In the extreme, this has included outright vile content, which Huffman took direct focus on when returning as CEO in 2015, introducing content restrictions to outright ban or quarantine Reddit’s most heinous content.⁵ Still, for the most part, Reddit’s users see it as a place for good - enabling activities such as a 200,000 person Secret Santa gift exchange - and a way for people to “find their tribe.”⁵ That same untameable and decentralized culture also creates significant concerns for advertisers on Reddit’s emerging ad network.⁴ To many, the API rules represent the latest change in a broader corporate sanitization of Reddit as it pushes to go public and risks extinguishing that which has fueled the platform’s growth thus far.

Reddit’s unique structure using a largely volunteer-supported workforce is uncommon. But the inter-team dynamics and mutual peer-to-peer dependence it creates are fairly universal and reflect the working relationships many of us see in our own day-to-day work. As he looks to make sweeping changes at Reddit, Huffman needs to find a way to bring moderators along for the ride. Similarly, when we look to implement changes for our own teams, we have to consider how those changes might impact other teams and work to build buy-in with them. If we do not do this effectively, like Huffman, we are likely to face resistance and risk falling short of our goal. Here, we will look at effective techniques for building consensus when we do not have unilateral decision-making authority, the biases that make it difficult to force plans through, and why a slower and more deliberate plan design is ultimately most effective.

‍

Why Do Ideas Get Pushback Anyways?

Steve Huffman may have been surprised by the amount of blowback received in response to recent corporate strategy announcements. He should not have been. A moderator protest is not even unheard of in Reddit’s short history. In 2015, moderators shut down hundreds of sub-reddits in protest to the sudden termination of Victoria Taylor, a Reddit corporate team member who ran the popular “AskMeAnything”. Moderators stated that “admins didn’t realize how much we rely on Victoria” and “Victoria is an essential lifeline of communication.”⁶At that time, moderators cited concerns about being blind-sided by the decision to let go of Taylor and frustrated that the corporate team had not sought out their feedback. This feeling runs parallel to current outcries from the volunteer team. Regarding the announced API changes, one moderator shared “We aren’t here to argue that Reddit shouldn’t be charging for their API. We’re here to argue that the timeline and the price of their API are both unreasonable and anti-competitive.”⁷

It is uncommon that any new initiative would get zero pushback from the parties it impacts. We have likely experienced this ourselves when we put a new idea forward for our business only to be challenged in our approach by another team who is tangentially involved. Beyond the well-known status quo bias, we can find another cognitive bias that leads to an immediate subversive response to the plans shared by others.

‍

Not Invented Here Bias

The Not Invented Here bias is a decision making error where we tend to value our own ideas above those conceived by people outside of the group, regardless of actual quality.⁸ Specifically, for this bias there needs to be a boundary of knowledge between two groups and an irrational devaluation of knowledge provided by the other group. We see this today in Reddit. There is a clear divide between Reddit’s corporate and volunteer workforce, a divide which Huffman has only deepened in recent weeks by referring to moderators as “landed gentry” and calling them out of touch.⁷ Huffman similarly cites data points, including that 93% of moderating actions take place through Reddit’s platform rather than 3rd-party apps, to express his belief that moderators do not have a clear sense of the proposed change’s impact. For their part, moderators calling Huffman’s plans “unreasonable” suggest that they also see Huffman as out of touch regarding the execution of the switchover.⁷

We all likely see this in our own business teams, even if on a smaller scale. Much of what we do is cross-functional, involving different specialist groups across the company. When we propose a change to part of our team’s process, that will generally influence the work of another team in some way. As a result, when we inform those groups of our plans, we regularly get stopped in our tracks with a litany of problems. Usually, we are even asked to abandon our plan entirely or given an alternative that does not meet our initial requirements.

There are a few ways we can thwart the not-invented-here bias in our daily activity. It generally involves re-orienting the conversation on objective and measurable concepts. First, we must be sure to highlight and abandon thought-terminating cliches. These statements are given as dogmatic truths, such as “That’s not the way we do things here” or “We already tried that”.⁸ We cannot take these claims at face value. Asking follow-up questions like “What is different about our current environment versus the last time we tried this?” or “How long has it been since we tried an alternative to our current approach?” can help put perspective around these cliches. Next, we have to make sure to use objective measures in evaluating the options. It is hard to have an unbiased conversation around aspects like usability, but price or reliability are hard to misvalue. For Reddit moderators, this means that they cannot simply cite Huffman’s pricing plan as “anticompetitive”. Such a description certainly devalues what the corporate team may know about product positioning. Instead, they should highlight Huffman’s view that Reddit loses millions annually supporting 3rd party apps and put this in contrast to the Apollo dev team’s view that their API fees alone will exceed $20 million. Similarly, both sides need to come to terms on what the protest means for users, as each side subjectively quotes that the majority opinion falls on their side. When we move the discussion from its initial emotional response to a more objective conversation, we are better able to appreciate each group’s knowledge and context to arrive at better decisions.

Finally, the simplest solution is to break the frame of this situation entirely by getting the groups on the same side of the table. Not-invented-here bias occurs when there is a clean divide between two-groups. We can short-circuit this bias by removing that divide and seeing the groups as a single, larger team. For Reddit corporate and moderators, this should have been easy. Moderators’s wants to maintain existing functionality did not need to be at odds with the executive team’s desire to charge for API usage. Had the pricing change been designed as a collaborative opportunity, the two sides could have designed a solution that met both needs. With both sides seeing their wants represented in the solution, both would have felt like insiders and more readily adopted the change.

‍

Stop and Regroup

We have already covered how Huffman’s pricing change plans came about quickly. The updated policy was initially hinted at in April of this year.⁹ The updated term details were shared at the end of April and scheduled to take effect on June 19, only 2 months later.¹⁰ This tight timeline gave 3rd-party developers very little time to review and react to the planned changes. But react they did. Top developers were vocal about what the change would cost them at current usage and even highlighted how a pared down version of their apps would be unable to turn a profit.¹¹ Despite the public feedback and recent protests, Huffman pushed forward regardless.

Again, we have probably experienced a similar situation at work. Whether we have been the one planning or the one receiving the plans, it is easy to remember a situation where a changeover plan was shared as “final” and was pushed through against clear and consistent disagreement. Again, we should look to the biases that may be at play to better understand why this happens.

‍

Plan Continuation Bias

Plan Continuation Bias describes the error of continuing to follow an initial plan despite changing circumstances and increasing evidence that you should reconsider your stance. Earlier, we saw the not-invented-here bias pair with the status-quo bias. Plan continuation bias is in many ways, a conglomerate of other biases that come together situationally to form this phenomenon.

The first common bias at play here is the sunk cost fallacy, which causes us to stick with bad plans longer if we have invested more resources into it. Note that this investment can take many forms, like money and time. However, it can also include social capital. In the case of Reddit, the latter is likely at play in a big way as we can expect that Steve Huffman has generated significant shareholder excitement over the potential to use Reddit’s API pricing as a revenue driver and diversifier.

The second factor at play are what researchers Roberto, Bohmer, and Edmondson referred to as “ambiguous threats” - a signal that is unclear in its potential impact and offers little guidance on a path forward. A building fire is an example of a clear threat. Developer concerns over API pricing is an ambiguous threat. The concerns expressed told Reddit nothing about how many apps would choose to operate and pay up, offered no guidance on how user engagement would change from the update, and did not answer any open questions about the best path forward for the company. Ambiguous threats are problems because they prey on the human psyche’s preference to avoid danger.¹³ Specifically, ambiguous threats trigger:

Selective Perception - The tendency to forget or ignore stimuli that causes emotional discomfort or contradicts existing beliefs.¹⁴
Conservatism Bias - The tendency to insufficiently update one’s beliefs when presented with new information, instead favoring prior existing opinions.¹⁵
Belief Perseverance - The tendency to maintain or strengthen an existing belief when presented with contradictory information, even if that information is clear.¹⁶

When these biases come together in an ambiguous threat, new information to suggest that the current plan is outdated gets underutilized. In the case of Reddit, Huffman may have selectively interpreted the lack of immediate outcry after announcing the pricing changes as implicit confirmation of buy-in from developers. As more people started to express concerns, the ambiguous nature would have led to minimal updates to the company's belief that this could be a problem. And ultimately, thanks to belief perseverance, when presented with firm evidence of developer, moderator, and user dissatisfaction, Huffman became further entrenched in his initial position.

Per Roberto et. al., there are a few tactics that we can follow to help disrupt the plan continuation bias and help our business teams put together an updated approach. First, if the threat is ambiguous, it helps to amplify the signal.¹³ To do this effectively, companies need to allow their people to rigorously vet smaller anomalies that occur. This may mean looking into variance that is not a real problem. That must be acceptable as the discovery exercise can still lead to insights that could better tune future detection or uncover new questions that are worth further exploration. Second, companies need to become comfortable with learning to not rely on data and using simple experiments to prove out a path forward. Researchers noted that robust data is often missing from ambiguous threat situations. Learning to not be reliant on data-driven answers and using explanatory experiments to work iteratively through a path forward is the best bet to succeed in these low-clarity situations. Finally, having the chance to practice these skills over time is a major help. For Reddit, a better path here may have been to focus on the initial reactions of major developers and amplify their concerns by conducting user interviews to better understand the degree of their concerns. From there, the corporate team could have conducted prototype design experiments with developers and their moderator teams to understand how each would react to different price strategies and the potential problems arising from the loss of different aspects of 3rd-party app functionality. Alas, Reddit, who has a history of poor responsiveness to moderator feedback, never got the practice it needed to deliver on this tactic.

‍

How to Solve Everything - Stop the Clock

It is inevitable that we will run into problems created by the not-invented-here and plan continuation bias. No matter how much prep and training we do, there will always be instances triggered by ambiguous threats or cross-team disagreements that we need to tackle. While each cause has its own relevant solutions, there is one universal tactic we can apply to quickly account for both factors. Stop the clock.

Often the stressors we face are a result of time pressure and resulting rush through the delivery. If the not-invented-here bias can be eliminated by establishing proper buy-in across functions, why do more teams not focus on having more collaborative design discussions or finding objective measures for evaluation? Simply, it takes more time than simply trying to push an idea through. Plan continuation bias also leads us to barrel ahead despite evidence that change is needed. Generally, this occurs because we are hard-pressed by a deadline and do not have the time to take our foot off the gas and regroup. In either case, when we remove the time pressure of the situation proper alignment becomes a much less stressful and combative activity. It should never be our goal to deviate from a deadline. But in most cases, deadlines are intentionally defined by our own teams and are mostly useful as a means for planning work across operating teams. When the alternative is to rush and deliver low quality work, we should readily stop and reset time expectations. Deadlines are a tool that we should use to improve work quality, not a punishment that can diminish it.

This is not to say that we should not move fast and strive to stay on a tight schedule. After all, it is the constant passing and finite nature of time that gives meaning to all we do and makes time the most valuable of human resources. Also, your boss will not be happy if you constantly deliver work behind schedule. Further, in some situations, such as emergency response, time and deadlines are set and have real consequences. In this case, we can’t stop the clock. But we can slow it down. Roberto et. al.’s advice in relation to ambiguous threats is that practicing high pressure situations gives teams the opportunity to refine their processes for scoping problems and thinking quickly about possible solutions.¹³ The last thing an organization wants in a high pressure scenario is to rely on a team that has never worked together in that type of environment and to rely on improvisation without a structured operating model to direct activity. I am not advocating for creating a high-strung pressure cooker type of environment. However, a time-boxed, intentionally designed practice scenario can give teams reps at learning how to work on hard problems together effectively.

‍

Conclusion

It remains to be seen how the latest rift between Reddit and its volunteer moderators will end. Initial analysis showed that the protests had decreased user time on site by 16%, a meaningful drop for a company looking to put up strong growth metrics on its way towards an IPO. Two weeks later, most onsite engagement has returned to normal, seemingly matching Huffman’s view that “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well.”¹⁷ No matter the result, we have to make sure we separate our analysis of the ultimate conclusion from the path of how we get there. That path will be littered with disagreement, resentment, and unnecessary conflicts ignited and fanned by each of the many sides of Reddit’s organization.

For our teams, we can learn a few key change management lessons from our view from the sidelines. First, we should be comfortable with using good solutions, even if they do not come from within our team. And, when we need to work cross-functionally, inviting others to be a part of our team for the design process can be an effective way to remove blockers and build buy-in. Second, there is no good reason to stick to a bad plan. Setting expectations that any plan can be worth revision and giving our teams ample opportunity to highlight potential problems can set us up well to iterate towards the best solution. Finally, seeing deadlines as a flexible tool to use and creating intentional practice scenarios can help us keep time on our side rather than breathing down our necks.

Change is hard. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.

‍

References

‍

Reddit - Unnecessarily Difficult Change Management