Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin • Hacker News Board

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#581

Post by python490 » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #209

vonklaus wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> basically everything you said It isn't about the firing. It is about subverting posts, subverting ideologies, deleting subs, limiting free speech in general and having an ambiguous morality/decision making process that is impossible to trust. Hiring Pao was so stupid. Leaving aside whether she was qualified, you can't lead a team that doesn't respect or relate to you. > this is a huge vote of "no confidence" toward…

The same goes for Yishan Wong, who personally hired Ellen Pao, supports the recent moderation actions[1], thought he wasn't qualified for the job[2], and censored creepshots, right? The whole thing's been going downhill since 2012, I guess? [1] http://www.quora.com/Reddit-Strengthens-Moderation-Spring-an... [2] http://www.redditblog.com/2012/03/new-reddit-ceo-reporting-f...

Those two are going to run reddit into the ground. They are trying to push their own agenda onto the community.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#582

Post by hga » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

Mahn wrote: post #572

kzhahou wrote: post #566

Ellen Pao has zero trust from the community. A lot of people said this was because Pao is a woman and reddit is sexist. But then explain this reaction to Victoria. Here's a thought: the reddit community despises Pao because Pao is in no way part of the community . She's a bizdev-turned-investor corporate suit who seemingly came out of nowhere to now run the site. She's posted very few times since becoming interim CEO…

I have no inside information on Reddit management, but as an outsider who's watched reddit grow over the years, I get the impression the core problem with Reddit right now is not Ellen Pao per se. Ellen Pao was brought in as a person to run Reddit as a business and make money and that's exactly what I presume she is trying to do, the issue here is the vision of the company as a whole, the people (investors, sharehold…

It might be useful to distinguish between the vision, the plan to implement that vision, and the execution of that plan.

I think what you're saying is that you cannot conceive of a plan that will successfully implement the vision to make money.

I'd add that execution seems to be sorely lacking, whatever the vision or plan, assuming a real plan even exists (which I suppose it part of execution as well, "have a plan").

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#583

Post by mreiland » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:34 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #352

darkmighty wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, 'reddit-likes' have definitively a place in the Internet, and I mean for the next couple decades. This format has been iterated over and over, starting with slashdot, 4chan, digg et al, and it's obviously one of the best ways we ever found to manage large discussions/news/etc. HN is an example. Reddit is growing and would continue to grow really quickly. There's no competition in sight. Owning the discu…

Will there be chat forums on the internet? Yes, obviously. But that's unrelated to a particular forum's value as a business. As far as reddit growing, is the plan to lose money on each pv but make it up in volume? Even stack overflow seems to have trouble monetizing, and that's both brand safe and targeted to a valuable audience.

do you have evidence that SO has trouble monetizing?

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#584

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #513

radley wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't go private to protest. That action simply cascaded into a large protest.

What other reason is there to go private?

[deleted]

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#585

Post by noelsusman » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #513

radley wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't go private to protest. That action simply cascaded into a large protest.

What other reason is there to go private?

They wanted to force a response from the admins since they weren't getting anything from them.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#586

Post by antocv » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:39 PM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #122

forgottenpass wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users keep getting pissed off at them. I can't agree more, back in the jedberg/HueyPreist days the staff felt like reddit users, now you get the feeling the office just looks at the community as a magic box of unpaid labor. Anyone putting in real effort is bette…

> basically everything you said It isn't about the firing. It is about subverting posts, subverting ideologies, deleting subs, limiting free speech in general and having an ambiguous morality/decision making process that is impossible to trust. Hiring Pao was so stupid. Leaving aside whether she was qualified, you can't lead a team that doesn't respect or relate to you. > this is a huge vote of "no confidence" toward…

> It isn't about the firing. It is about subverting posts, subverting ideologies

It is political. See r/UkrainianConflict for an example.

I followed that sub from its creation to what it has become - it is USAs own propaganda channel. I find it fascinating how it has become that way.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#587

Post by will_the_bomb » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #274

natrius wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who loves reddit, this dichotomy is the clearest sign that it has no future. Anyone who values freedom of expression and knows how to program can help build a decentralized reddit that no one controls on top of platforms like IPFS and Ethereum's Swarm. Every attempt at building a reddit clone fails because reddit enjoys tremendous network effects. But decentralization yields its own network effects—you don…

I wouldn't say I love Reddit, but I'm certainly an active user. But I'm not subscribed to any of the subreddits that were affected, and I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this thread. There are lots of little communities that work well, with their own things they value. (There was a particular thread over on /r/OrthodoxChristianity, now removed, that would have been hilarious if it wasn't sad: a member of the…

> I'm not subscribed to any of the subreddits that were affected, and I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this thread

While that might have been true when you posted this comment, I have trouble believing that it could be true for anybody right now. At least a half dozen defaults have gone private an the majority of posts on the signed-out home page are about this story.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#588

Post by swalsh » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

Kranar wrote: post #168

nothis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, though... isn't this just a total overreaction? I get that Victoria getting fired was bad for /r/IAMA (which once WASN'T a celebrity PR stop) but how does setting the whole damn subreddit to private help anyone? Like, I'm seriously asking. How? The "solidarity" thing also makes my eyes roll because I don't fully get how a place like /r/AskReddit is affected by this, at all. Reddit's admins have always taken…

Victoria being fired is basically the last straw in what has been close to a year of friction between the people who volunteer to provide and manage reddit's content (the moderators) and the people who profit off of their work (reddit the corporation). This event basically exemplified the fact that reddit as a corporation doesn't care one bit about their volunteers/moderators and the subs going private is basically t…

"Firing Victoria on the spot for what seems to have been an AMA gone wrong"

It's even worse than that... the firing seems to have been related to friction about monetizing AMA's

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#589

Post by kefka » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #549

dagw wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was glorious. And then it died.

.. partly due to lack of effective moderation tools.

No. It was thanks to the ISPs dumping NNTP servers.

Back in the dialup days, they had NNTP servers available, pulling nearly all the NGs. As time went by, alt.binaries took over 99% of the bandwidth, along with a nice cornucopia of pirated content. It was rather awesome.

When DSL/Cable took over, those companies axed their news servers, if they had any at all. And your server choice was to use a non-binaries carrying, post limited free server or paid server.

That's how it was killed.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#590

Post by Crito » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

mtdono wrote: post #349

Crito wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the bizarre nature of Jackson's comments in that AMA, I somewhat suspect that Victoria fucked up by writing down what Jackson was saying over the phone verbatim . Doing that is usually a good way to make somebody seem rather illiterate. For example, people are much looser with the way they structure sentences and organize thoughts when speaking in an unprepared manner. When you listen to audio of them talking,…

The JJ angle has already been removed as the reason for dismissal. (Besides, Victoria is known, adored for actually being able to type down what the person doing the AMA sounds like --see Jeff Glodblum AMA). See here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png I suspect that this had much more to do with the one thing that a management team is more interested in: money. - AMAs are (or were?) probably one of the…

Pao seems to directly refute Marc's claims: https://i.imgur.com/0LZWrFp.jpg

It's not impossible that she is lying, but I think it is quite plausible that Marc's contact is not as authoritative as Marc seems to think. He is probably just repeating that person's speculation.

I'd also like to point out that if they fired Victoria for embarrassing Jackson, admitting that this was the case would be counterproductive because it would make a mob of angry redditors [even more] angry at Jackson.