About nine months after taking on the role of head of community management at Reddit, Kristine Fasnacht (u/krispykrackers) has left the company. In a post titled, “Admin released from captivity, reintroduced to Reddit community,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrote:
I am sad to share that u/krispykrackers is leaving Reddit. Over the past five years, she has done an incredible amount of work for us and the Reddit community. She has been the face of our Community team at Reddit; helped us write many of our policies and was indispensable working through countless tricky situations; and she lead our efforts in support of Extra Life, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. She has been a friend to me and many others here. While we are sad to see her go, we wish her the best going forward.
Actually replacing Kristine is impossible, but next Monday, four (maybe five!) new members of our Community and Trust and Safety teams will be starting, which will give the team even more horsepower.
Reddit has been in turmoil for the last year or so, losing one senior employee after another. Fasnacht came on as head of community in August, following the departure of Jessica Moreno, who left last July. Before taking on that role, she was temporarily managing Reddit’s Ask Me Anything Q&A sessions following the firing of Reddit’s director of talent, Victoria Taylor.
In a meeting with Huffman yesterday, he mentioned that half of the 11-year-old company, which entails about 130 employees, has started in the last six months. About a year ago, Reddit employed somewhere between 70 to 80 people, Huffman said. Within the last year, Reddit has created a Trust & Safety team, an anti-evil team for creating mandates around bullying, spam and account takeovers, and the community team has doubled.
To be clear, my meeting with Huffman was not related to this piece of news. In response to an inquiry about Fasnacht’s departure, Reddit VP of Marketing Celestine Maddy confirmed that Fasnacht left the company about 20 days ago.
“Upon leaving, some members of the community team post to r/modsupport and answer questions in the comments about their departure,” Maddy told TechCrunch via email. “Kristine’s post is here. Her user name is r/krispykrackers so you can identify her communication in the thread.”
I have reached out to Fasnacht and will update this story if I hear back. In response to someone on Reddit, Fasnacht said she has retired her “banhammer.”
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