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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

#321

Post by whywhywhywhy »

divslinger wrote: post #263
MrJagil wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have quite an intricate system build up to get the most quality out of reddit as poossible —it’s still quite bad, but it’s better. I have been thinking of making a blog post or soemthing about it. - I have a multireddit with select magic the gathering subs - I have a multireddit with select tech subs - I have a multireddit with general high quality subs - My “all” feed has HUNDREDS of subs filtered off. This is a l…

Muting words on Twitter might help

I mute 3000+ accounts and 300+ words.

It doesn't really help, every time something happens in America theres a new word you have to mute, also Twitter doesn't respect certain hashtags mutes if they have a custom icon and people retweeting things bypasses the mutes sometimes.

Twitter could easily just solve all this by adding a huge "Politics On/Off" switch in their preferences and then people who for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think its more important to control the flow of political information that is broadcast to their users even if its at a great detriment to their users mental health.

I don't want to be on Twitter, I was forced on Twitter because RSS was killed by Google Reader and all the journos/bloggers said "Just use Twitter, whats the big deal" now the only way to get the information I used to get before is with an unwanted side order of politics.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#322

Post by jl2718 »

piva00 wrote: post #283
throwawaysea wrote: post #161

Please influence the board to stop caving into censorship and let Reddit return to its free thinking roots. As ever expansive “hate speech” policies take root, the website is being co-opted to reflect just one worldview - that of the progressive left. This is dangerous and unwelcoming.

It would be great if conservative and progressive right wing could help to not let those communities devolve into prejudice, racism and eugenics. It is a problem when an ideology attracts the worst in human kind, as much as I hate the authoritarian left.

It’s crazy how people still don’t understand how the internet works differently than meatspace. If an extreme right position eliminates the platform for a moderate conservative, those positions are going to be taken by their enemies, not their allies. The same tactic doesn’t work in the opposite direction because nothing on the left is out of bounds. Because of this double-standard at the extremes, it’s impossible for a moderated Internet forum not to slide ‘left’, and it’s impossible for an unmoderated forum to not slide ‘right’.

Given so much internet and so little real-world interaction, I think we’ve completely lost touch with what ‘regular’ people actually think.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#323

Post by Traster »

nisuni wrote: post #13

I am sorry for him. I know as a fact that he’s brilliant and fully deserves the position, but given the circumstances (Ohanian resigning and calling for someone black to replace him) he will always have to live with people having the reasonable doubt that he didn’t arrive there for merit alone.

I actually think reddit has fallen in to the opposite trap here. Because of the increased scrutiny that people of colour get when being put in these roles we see this trend that only massively over-qualified PoC are being put in these roles. As a result you end up in a situation where you aim for an increase in diversity but in reality you end up with a handful of people who are rotated through all the possible positions. Simply because everyone wants the signalling of hiring diverse people, but no one wants to take risks when doing that.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#324

Post by CryptoPunk »

henryfjordan wrote: post #53

Why stick to the insular Silicon Valley club and not get someone who's devoted their life to civil rights? There are a ton of community activists who could actually bring a fresh perspective. EDIT: I do not mean to question his particular qualifications or his commitment to change, only to comment on the fact that it could have been someone from a different walk of life. Tech leadership in Silicon Valley does not app…

Why let the Civil Rights Establishment define what civil rights mean. Left-wing racial justice activists shouldn't be allowed to monopolize the term to mean the advancement of their vision for the world.

In any case, what Ohanian asked for was that a black person take his place. Not that his replacement be prominent in so-called Civil Rights circles.

An accomplished black tech entrepreneur as a board member does more for the reputation of black tech workers than a lifelong activist whose main occupation has been disseminating ideology.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#325

Post by kamyarg »

antihero wrote: post #319
SpeakMouthWords wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the full-time job of each member.

I wonder what the income from the positions are though - IE would they make minimum wage if that was the only position they had?

Usually public companies publish these figures.

As far as I can tell from ones I have seen, they make more than a Senior Engineer makes mostly by RSUs.

You can find proxy statement for public companies(Amazon, Google,, they publish it before the annual shareholder meeting which most of the time includes compensation for board members.

For example, here is the one Alphabet published recently for 2020: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2020_alphabet_proxy_stat...

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#326

Post by ansTQLLA »

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.

You can find any number of comments on Reddit but also on Slashdot (at least up to 2015 or so) whose quality is higher than many comments here.

They are drowned in the noise, but on Reddit it is very easy to read past the noise.

Here the noise is usually someone trying to sell you something while pretending to be innocent or defending his employer while pretending to be innocent.

Much harder to read past that, also since the moderation claims it never happens.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#327

Post by jl2718 »

seesawtron wrote: post #293

Is this related to resignation of one of the co-founders in the last week who said among other things "...I urge my position to be filled by a man of color" or is this an unrelated story? Just want to understand that context.

He seemed like the obvious choice, so, seems like a jerk move to blast out a virtue signal for yourself at his expense.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#328

Post by tomhoward »

markdown wrote: post #275
tomhoward wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

The question was about what power the board has, not how a well-functioning board should operate.

Sure, technically, perhaps, but also not really? Their fiduciary duty is to act in the company's best interests, so they can't do anything that a court could find was harmful to the company, or to shareholders, including minority shareholders.

So, much like in a healthy governmental system, there's a tension of power; between the board, management, shareholders, customers, the general public, and the law.

So it's not really "ultimate" power. Yes "ultimate" in terms of appointing executives and setting long-term company direction. But not "ultimate" in terms of being able to, say, arbitrarily shut down a subreddit; if management didn't agree and it was not clearly in the company's best interests, it could lead to a leadership crisis and/or a fiduciary breach.

Note the questioner specified: "In terms of day to day operations...". The point is that the board is expressly not meant to interfere in day-to-day operations.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#329

Post by johannes1234321 »

antihero wrote: post #312
vecter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little in terms of day-to-day, unless a board director decides to make it his/her mission to change something at that very low level. The board meets typically quarterly (monthly depending on the circumstances?) and is generally focused on higher level questions like the company's growth trajectory and forecasts, major problems, compensation strategy, hiring key executives, fundraising, M&A, etc. Like I mentione…

So if they have a meeting every 3 months, what is the rest of their time spent doing? Sounds like a pretty cushy job.

Even outside formal meetings board members typically use their network (connections or board posts in other companies) to push the company's agenda. Which can lead to business deals or have effect on law or whatever.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#330

Post by mellosouls »

digitaltrees wrote: post #259
jimbob45 wrote: post #254

The most unmeritocratic job filling I’ve seen. He got the job for being black. They should have just employed the Rooney Rule to make things seem fair. This will just spurn the opponents of Affirmative Action that much harder, myself included. Weird that the NFL has the better idea here.

He got the job because he is friends with powerful people. He is friends with powerful people because he worked hard to be in situations with opportunity and proved himself repeatedly by delivering extraordinary results. The only reason his race is coming into play is that people realize that this self selection of white men will continue as long as the decision makers are white and chose to hire people from their ow…

While your comments on race being a reasonable factor are fair enough, you seem rather blind to the absurdity of another upper middle class ivy League democrat from a very elite clique being shuffled into another senior tech position on "my turn" basis being considered meritocratic.

Let's not be too rose-tinted here...

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