Reddit's August 12, 2026 Form 8-K does not confirm that Paul Cappuccio has been appointed Chief Legal Officer. It confirms that Benjamin Lee intends to leave the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary roles on September 14, remain a Reddit employee through September 25 to assist the transition, and that Reddit expects to appoint Cappuccio.
The question this map answers is narrow: which legal-leadership states does Reddit's filing establish, on which dates, and with what level of certainty? That wording matters because “Lee out, Cappuccio in” compresses a confirmed role exit, a later employment end, and a prospective appointment into one false instant.
Source scope and observation window
MyMap read Reddit's Form 8-K, SEC accession 0001713445-26-000107, at 4:20 AM Pacific Time on August 13, 2026. Reddit filed it after the market close on August 12; the filing says the earliest reported event also occurred August 12.
The map uses only Item 5.02 for the company-specific states. The SEC's blank Form 8-K and EDGAR API documentation define the monitoring context, but they do not add facts about Reddit's organization. No media report, biography, or assumed executive hierarchy supplies an edge.
The three states hidden in two sentences
| State | Date | Evidence status | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lee notifies Reddit of his intention to step down | Aug. 12, 2026 | confirmed event | the company received notice |
| Lee steps down as Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary | Sept. 14, 2026 | confirmed future-effective change | both named officer roles end on the disclosed date |
| Lee remains an employee to assist the transition | through Sept. 25, 2026 | confirmed transition period | officer status and employment status are not the same |
| Reddit expects to appoint Cappuccio to both roles | no effective date stated | expected, not completed | a successor is identified, but appointment and timing remain unconfirmed |
“Confirmed future-effective” means the source states that a change will take effect on a named date. It does not mean MyMap observed the date pass. “Expected” preserves the company's prospective wording. “Unknown” means the filing supplies no defensible value.
The first visual lane tracks Lee's officer-role state. The second tracks his employment state. The third tracks Cappuccio's appointment state. Those lanes are deliberately separate because the dates and evidentiary verbs differ.
What the controlling source confirms
Item 5.02 confirms Lee's two current titles, the September 14 role-exit date, the September 25 end of the transition employment period, and the stated purpose of assisting with the transition of his responsibilities. It also confirms Reddit's expectation regarding Cappuccio and the two titles the company expects him to hold.
The filing does not call Lee's departure a termination, retirement, or completed resignation. It says he notified Reddit of his “intention to step down.” Preserving that verb avoids assigning a cause or employment characterization the source does not provide.
The two titles should be represented as two role nodes attached to one person, not collapsed into a generic “legal executive” label. That makes a later partial change detectable: a future filing could confirm one title on a different date or assign Corporate Secretary elsewhere.
What MyMap derives
MyMap derives the three-lane state model and the observation that officer status, employment status, and successor status change on different clocks. The filing does not publish this diagram or label the sequence “three states.” That is the editorial transformation.
The map also treats September 14 to September 25 as a transition interval. This is derived from the disclosed dates plus the statement that Lee will assist in transferring responsibilities. It is not a reporting line, consulting arrangement, or co-leadership period.
The most useful org diff here is therefore not a full hierarchy. It is a before/transition/expected-after view:
- before September 14, Lee holds both named officer roles;
- from September 14 through September 25, the filing says Lee remains an employee assisting the transition, while the named officer roles have ended;
- Cappuccio is the identified expected successor, but his appointment has no confirmed effective date in this source.
What remains unknown
The filing does not establish who holds either role during any gap, whether the Board or another body must complete the appointment, when Cappuccio would start, whether both titles become effective together, or to whom the Chief Legal Officer reports. It also does not state why Lee is stepping down or describe the destination of any responsibilities before the expected appointment.
Those are not minor omissions to patch with convention. Drawing Cappuccio inside a solid “appointed” box would turn management's expectation into a completed governance event. Connecting the Chief Legal Officer to the CEO would turn a common pattern into an unsupported company-specific claim.
Unknown is a valid graph state. A missing effective date is more informative than a fabricated handoff arrow.
A reproducible mapping method
To reproduce the visual, open the filing index, select the primary 8-K document, and locate Item 5.02. Extract every person, exact title, action verb, effective date, and continuing status. Then create one lane per independently changing state.
For this filing, the extraction record is:
| Field | Stored value |
|---|---|
| Filing identity | CIK 1713445; accession 0001713445-26-000107 |
| Observation | Aug. 13, 2026, 4:20 AM PT |
| Person A | Benjamin Lee |
| Role event | intends to step down; effective Sept. 14 |
| Employment event | remains employee through Sept. 25 |
| Person B | Paul Cappuccio |
| Successor event | company expects to appoint; date not stated |
| Unsupported edges | reporting line, interim holder, appointment authority, reason |
Do not normalize “expects to appoint” into “appointed.” Do not use the filing timestamp as the effective date. Preserve both exact titles, and retain the source sentence beside each proposed node during review.
Teams adapting the state lanes can use an editable MyMap org chart to show confirmed, expected, and unknown relationships without forcing a complete hierarchy. That tool is the next workflow step, not evidence for Reddit's structure.
Limitations and update trigger
This is a filing-level snapshot, not a live directory of Reddit employees. The source could be followed by another filing, an official governance-page update, or a changed effective date. It says nothing about informal responsibility transfers or internal access controls.
The page should be updated when Reddit files or publishes a controlling source that confirms Cappuccio's appointment, supplies an effective date, names an interim officer, or changes Lee's transition dates. Until then, the expected-successor node must remain visually different from the confirmed role-exit nodes.
Practical next step
On September 14, check a new Reddit filing and its official leadership or governance page before changing the successor node to “appointed.” Record the observation time and preserve this version so readers can distinguish a later confirmation from a silent editorial correction.
For citation, cite Reddit's 8-K for the company facts and MyMap for the three-lane state analysis. If reusing the visual, keep “expected” attached to Cappuccio and keep Lee's role exit separate from his later employment end.