I wouldn't be surprised that happened ultimately, but I really don't think that she was hired with that role/goal in mind. No one could be that evil. Could they?

If you look at the history of reddit over the years, they've always lurched from one crisis to another. An absence of adult supervision. Reactive solutions.

I would bet that reddit was under pressure to monetize somehow and ads (a la Facebook) on that "community" wouldn't cut it. I believe that they had an influx of funds around the same time, and the investors were looking to start getting some returns.

Their various stealth marketing schemes were suffering at the hands of the entrenched trolls. The unsavory subreddits were probably putting off established customers.

Maybe Pao just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

yishan's comment is interesting, thanks for linking to it. I didn't follow the whole Pao affair, but I do remember someone telling me that yishan might have been trolling reddit.

One thing jumps out at me from his comment. He calls Pao "the only technology executive anywhere who had the chops and experience to manage a startup of this size, AND who understood what reddit was all about."

Technology executive? Really? That's news to me. I thought she had spent her pre-reddit days in finance.

And she definitely did not understand reddit.