“It's way better if members are passionate and loud than dispassionate and quiet. The fact that they care enough to yell is really a gift.” - Evan Hamilton

Reddit is the mothership for sub-communities known as “subreddits,” each of which covers a different topic from ask historians to cats standing up. Subreddits are each managed by a team of volunteers.

Thus as the Director of Community at Reddit, Evan Hamilton doesn’t have just one community to cultivate. He has hundreds of thousands of very distinct communities he’s tasked with serving.

These “Redditors” have a history of being candid with their feedback. In July 2015, thousands of Reddit moderators shut down a significant portion of the site’s subreddits to collectively boycott the company. Evan has been instrumental in rebuilding and sustaining trust with volunteers in the years since.

We talked with Evan about how Reddit builds with transparency and empathy at such significant scale.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

History of Reddit. How Reddit has evolved over the years with its user base.
Evan’s story as a Redditor. “Redditors relish in learning about the real world and the mundane.”
The community as a stakeholder. Reddit considers thier community not just as an asset, but also stakeholders.
Road show. Asking for and receiving hard feedback from the community.
Community council. A close circle of 50 moderators that Reddit builds with Reddit under NDA.
Scaling. Separating signals from the noise. “If you only think at scale, you will fail.”
Future of Reddit. Growing the user base.

👋🏻Say hi to Evan!

📄See the full transcript

This podcast was created by the team at People & Company.

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