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Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

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Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#241

Post by tomhoward »

markdown wrote: post #38
mindfulplay wrote: post #17

A dumb but serious question: what powers does a board of directors have? In terms of day to day operations, engineering, product, marketing and so on?

They have ultimate power over everything. They could ban my favourite subreddit tomorrow if they wanted. In practice however, they hire a CEO to handle all that for them and don't get involved unless things get so out of hand that they feel their CEO is steering the ship wrong. At this point they tell the CEO what outcomes they expect, and if he can't or won't comply, he gets replaced.

> They have ultimate power over everything. They could ban my favourite subreddit tomorrow if they wanted.

No well-functioning board would act like that. Sure, they can pressure the CEO to take particular action when the company is under pressure, but normally, that kind of micromanaging by the board would be a sign of serious dysfunction.

They are there to represent the shareholders, appoint the executives, and to ensure the company is being managed well, including complying with laws and adhering to relevant societal expectations.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#243

Post by TA0X6 »

nexuist wrote: post #234
TA0X6 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what part of "payment processors can discriminate" you don't understand. Even if you purchased your own hardware, your ISP, the payment processor you use to pay your ISP, your registrar, the payment processor you use to pay your registrar, etc. are not neutral entities. That makes "host your own" meaningless.

The payment processor I use to pay my ISP and registrar like...my bank account? To date I have never heard of anyone having their Internet cut off because their ISP did not like their political views. I am pretty sure neonazis are welcome to use all ISPs, from Comcast to Cox.

>The payment processor I use to pay my ISP and registrar like...my bank account?

Even if it's your bank account, you're still using a payment processor. Even if that's your bank, they can also decide not to do business with you.

>To date I have never heard of anyone having their Internet cut off because their ISP did not like their political views. I am pretty sure neonazis are welcome to use all ISPs, from Comcast to Cox.

Google what happened to Stormfront. Not that I agree with their views, but their ISPs, registrars, etc. told them to pound sand.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#244

Post by dessant »

gerdesj wrote: post #118
mindfulplay wrote: post #17

A dumb but serious question: what powers does a board of directors have? In terms of day to day operations, engineering, product, marketing and so on?

Bear in mind that not all companies are quite as big as this lot. I don't know the actual stats for any country but I think that small companies are quite important in terms of additive scale. In general your small company has a nasty habit of hiring people, abiding by the rules and paying taxes. So, I happen to be a Managing Director of a small company (UK) - we have 20 odd employees and a t/o of ~£1.5M. We are a pr…

> shareholders only get tickled

So, how can we become shareholders of your company?

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#245

Post by Digory »

jedberg wrote: post #230
Digory wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit publicly committed to selecting a director based on race.[0] Hiring and firing in the US based on race is typically unlawful, even if the candidate is qualified. You can’t use race as a qualification. It’s a challenge to the laws, and I assume Reddit(or Conde Nast) wants to raise it. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...

Reddit hasn't been owned by Conde Nast for a long time. Board members aren't employees, so discrimination rules don't apply. In fact California already has a law requiring discrimination based on gender (another protected class) for boards. All California companies must have one female board member and have at least two by 2021.

Heh. It’s still connected by the old Newhouse empire at the top, but you’d know that better than most, I’d wager.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#246

Post by [deleted] »

Digory wrote: post #245
jedberg wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit hasn't been owned by Conde Nast for a long time. Board members aren't employees, so discrimination rules don't apply. In fact California already has a law requiring discrimination based on gender (another protected class) for boards. All California companies must have one female board member and have at least two by 2021.

Heh. It’s still connected by the old Newhouse empire at the top, but you’d know that better than most, I’d wager.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#247

Post by jabroni_salad »

leesec wrote: post #134

Please get rid of the flow where it shows me other threads when I click on the comments of a current thread. I'm never going to switch to a new thread from the comments. I just want to read the comments.

I'm not logged in to reddit on my work machine but sometimes end up there during research. Using one of the old reddit redirect extensions is the only way to have a decent experience while logged out.

Whoever decided to only show two comments with no children for the current post for logged-out users is scum.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#248

Post by ianamartin »

apatters wrote: post #231
leesec wrote: post #134

Please get rid of the flow where it shows me other threads when I click on the comments of a current thread. I'm never going to switch to a new thread from the comments. I just want to read the comments.

Why don't we just tell it like it is? The majority of comments here reflect the fact that Reddit is a garbage site run by a garbage company. Used to be great, more garbage every day. They leverage network effect to abuse their users and to suck. I look forward to the day they fail and the free market replaces them.

Oh come on. Reddit was never great. It has always been the taint of the internet. There are worse places to hang out, but not by much.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#250

Post by dang »

apatters wrote: post #231
leesec wrote: post #134

Please get rid of the flow where it shows me other threads when I click on the comments of a current thread. I'm never going to switch to a new thread from the comments. I just want to read the comments.

Why don't we just tell it like it is? The majority of comments here reflect the fact that Reddit is a garbage site run by a garbage company. Used to be great, more garbage every day. They leverage network effect to abuse their users and to suck. I look forward to the day they fail and the free market replaces them.

I feel you, but alas it's by no means guaranteed that the "free market" would replace it with anything better. The same pressures would exist on any replacement, and those pressures all point to what you're calling garbage. We're lucky that something as quirky as Reddit got to succeed as well as it did.

It would be awesome if we could collectively get to the point where growth didn't have to trump everything else, so exploiting people's attention didn't have to dominate everything else, so more interesting and long-term satisfying things could flourish. It's unfortunately not clear what the path from here to there might look like.

I think about this a lot because Hacker News, for all its problems and fractiousness, is in sort of a blessed position where we're not subject to those same pressures and can optimize for other things. But it's also two orders of magnitude smaller than Reddit, which means we're not facing the same problems at all. If I think about facing those problems at that scale, the phrases 'sheer terror' and 'passing out' come to mind.

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