Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has attracted criticism from some online for his claim that the current Trump administration immigration agenda would’ve stopped companies like his from ever being founded, given that his mother was an undocumented immigrant.
“As the son of an undocumented immigrant (my mom overstayed an au pair visa for years before marrying my dad, a U.S. citizen), it’s deeply personal: Reddit wouldn’t exist if ICE had come for her,” Ohanian, who has since stepped down from the popular social network and message board, wrote on X on Tuesday.
The investor, who is of Armenian heritage on his father’s side and German on his mother’s, said the U.S. should instead seek both secure borders and a path to citizenship for migrants instead.
“The guys up at the crack of dawn in the Home Depot parking lot <> or the women hustling their home-made food on the corner are <> the men & women we want contributing to this great nation,” he said. “We shouldn’t be rounding them up at gunpoint.”
The comments earned Ohanian, who is married to tennis legend Serena Williams, scorn from conservative figures online.
“Reddit not existing had we enforced immigration law is a great argument for enforcing immigration law,” former Senate candidate Blake Masters wrote on X in response.
Others used Ohanian’s post to bring up controversial Reddit content-related decisions, including a 2020 decision to ban a popular Donald Trump-related sub-forum and one of the network’s other co-founders admitting to altering critical user comments about him.
“Your co founder and CEO went into the internal code of Reddit to alter a user’s comments because he was emotional,” podcaster Tim Pool wrote on X. “Reddit banned and censored political subreddits turning the platform into a hotbed of extremism. Reddit is one of the principal creators of the cultural strife in this country.”
The criticisms join larger conservative scrutiny of Reddit, including an invitation from House Oversight Committee head Rep. James Comer last month for the current CEO of Reddit to testify, given concerns about online extremism following the shooting of activist Charlie Kirk.
“In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence,” Comer said in a statement at the time.
While some in the tech and political world have voiced skepticism of Ohanian’s position, others in Silicon Valley are openly questioning the legality and benefit of the Trump administration’s military-style immigration crackdown.
“Later we’ll find it hard to believe that masked thugs were dragging people off the street at gunpoint,” Paul Graham, a co-founder of the influential Y Combinator startup incubator, wrote on X this week. “At least I hope we will, since the other alternative would be to decline into the kind of country where that’s normal.”
“We will probably look back at the period from August to October — about nine months into President Trump’s second presidency — as the period when it went off the rails,” added investor and podcast Jason Calacanis in a post on X on Wednesday. “This is turning into another January 6th, filled with violence and chaos — let’s hope it doesn’t get worse.”
Calacanis, one of the hosts of The All-In Podcast, had previously interviewed Trump on the campaign trail, lauded some of his priorities, and maintains close ties to the administration and its tech agenda.
