Steve Huffman: I screwed up and I want Reddit to trust me again

When you violate someone's trust you should not want them to immediately trust you again. You can hope for it, but you should not try to make them trust you.

Here's what you should want:

1) Their actual safety. Not that they trust you, but that you actually don't hurt them again. This should be your top priority.

2) They feel comfortable with the amount of distance between you and them. This doesn't require them trusting you, this requires them to have agency to put up a wall between you so that they feel safe.

3) They don't trust you too much too soon. You have shown that you are dangerous to them, and so you should desire them to only trust you as far as it is safe to. If they trust you too much, that puts you in a dangerous place where both of you could get hurt again.

From there, trust can come again, at its own pace. But that's entirely up to your reliability and their comfort. You shouldn't rush it. You shouldn't agitate for it. You should just make sure #1-3 happen and then it's just a waiting game.

Having people distrust you is not something to be ashamed of. Distrust is a critical tool for safety. No matter who you are, there are lots of situations where you shouldn't be trusted. That's good. If someone is wary of you, you should be grateful. They are helping you both stay safe. You should not hope to be universally trusted. You should hope to be trusted with the responsibilities you are ready for.

I believe that he'll do everything possible to stop this from happening again. However, Pandora's box has been opened, redditors will be conscious of the non-zero chance that any given comment has been altered.

It would be a nice first step to resign or take a lesser position. Yes, that sounds harsh. However, he's the CEO.

If he's editing posts without permission his promise never to do so again himself is pretty meaningless. He's the CEO of a company whose staff he must hold accountable to shareholders and the public. Is he in a position to hold employees accountable for doing this in the future?

He should be replaced as CEO and take a position that while it may make business decisions clearly is barred from access to the data. Then the company should appoint a Chief Ethics Officer or Chief Integrity Officer or something whose job is to make sure things like that don't happen at any level of the organization.

This is a bigger disaster than just deleting posts outright. It's dishonest. It's disloyal to the site membership. It represents the shareholders and advertisers poorly. Just about the worst violation one can imagine on a social interaction site is to falsify another person's words.

He will never be trusted again. The only way he as an individual can bring trust back to Reddit is to step down as CEO and resign in disgrace. Only then will people begin to believe that he feels remorse for his actions.