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Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

nytimes.com

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Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#81

Post by eli »

nawitus wrote: post #69
nhf wrote: post #10

I think this was the right thing to do from a PR perspective. Having Steve back as the new CEO will definitely be good for the community. I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS: > As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. [1] The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for…

Did the "community" make death threats? I didn't see any, and I don't think the average redditor would approve those. There will be death threats in almost any large-scale, heated discussion. The typical upvoted comments actually consisted of valid criticism against Pao and reddit's management.

I didn't really follow this subject, but I saw a lot of crude and frankly pretty racist joke images voted up to the front page.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#82

Post by kozukumi »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #32

“Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said. What exactly "phenomenal" has she done? Reddit works pretty much the same as it worked several years ago, but in the meantime she managed to piss off the majority of community, which is the only reason Reddit exists

I don't understand that either. I can't think of a single thing that she has done to make reddit better.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#83

Post by amyjess »

Flammy wrote: post #58
goldfeld wrote: post #11

So can someone summarize the ordeal?

Two major publicly visible actions: 1) Banning of several 'hate' subreddits especially /r/FatPeopleHate for harassment. The harassment was kind of dubious, as while they certainly weren't saying nice things, it didn't seem like they were actively doing 'raids' or doxing. At the same time several significantly worse, but smaller, subreddits remained online (gore, racism, sexism, etc) More info: https://www.reddit.com/…

> Removal of several employees, likely because they wouldn't/didn't relocate to SF.

Let's be perfectly honest here: that was Yishan's thing. He announced that change and set it into motion before he resigned.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#85

Post by lingben »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #32

“Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said. What exactly "phenomenal" has she done? Reddit works pretty much the same as it worked several years ago, but in the meantime she managed to piss off the majority of community, which is the only reason Reddit exists

Considering that it was Sam who brought in Ellen, what do expect him to say? if that isn't enough to warrant 'corporatespeak' over-drive, consider that Ellen really enjoys suing her employers and she still hasn't been able to completely pay her legal fees for the last case she lost.

Do you really want Sam to speak honestly about Ellen in public and open himself and reddit up to a lawsuit?

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#86

Post by stefantalpalaru »

nhf wrote: post #10

I think this was the right thing to do from a PR perspective. Having Steve back as the new CEO will definitely be good for the community. I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS: > As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. [1] The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for…

> I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS

You mean this?

> [1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.

All that opposition - strong enough to convince "Chairman Pao" to resign - reduced to death threats? All those arbitrary bans written off as a just punishment for criminal behavior? Something tells me that we haven't seen the last of "safe space" Reddit.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#87

Post by eli »

devindotcom wrote: post #38

Maybe I missed it, but was there ever any information on why Victoria was fired, or whether Pao actually had anything (or everything) to do with it? From where I was sitting, it seemed like no one actually learned the full story, which might be confidential or take time to contextualize/safely explain, and everyone immediately threw it on Pao's lap and downvoted any holding maneuvers she and the rest of the staff tri…

All I know is I'm glad I never had hundreds of thousands of people demand to know the gory details of why I left my job. Unless Victoria wants to share it, it really isn't any of our business.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#88

Post by ncallaway »

devindotcom wrote: post #38

Maybe I missed it, but was there ever any information on why Victoria was fired, or whether Pao actually had anything (or everything) to do with it? From where I was sitting, it seemed like no one actually learned the full story, which might be confidential or take time to contextualize/safely explain, and everyone immediately threw it on Pao's lap and downvoted any holding maneuvers she and the rest of the staff tri…

It was not made public why Victoria was fired. Neither of the parties are talking about it, so generally it's unknown.

The /r/iama mods were not upset that she was fired. They were upset that there was no transition plan in place.

> it seems like there was a lot of finger pointing before anyone knew what was actually happening

There was finger pointing because nobody knew what was happening. Functions that Victoria was performing fell through and — according to the /r/iama mods — jeopardized the functioning of the AMAs that week.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#89

Post by calcol »

minimaxir wrote: post #36

Ellen Pao gives the reason for leaving on /r/self: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_tha... > So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles. This is believable because there have been odd business decisions under her watch, not just policy decisions. RedditMade,…

That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure there was more to it, and the image that she has on Reddit was certainly not helpful, but she wasn't fired because of the backlash from last week and previous, because if that was the case she would have been fired much sooner, but instead she stepped down, by force or not, because she wasn't able to guarantee good revenue for Reddit by past actions and admission of the above.

Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

#90

Post by pavel_lishin »

post_break wrote: post #56
pavel_lishin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will reddit lessen their censorship efforts? I doubt it. Garbage like FPH should have been dealt with much sooner. The reason there was a backlash about that at all, imo, is because they let it drag out too long. Reddit was the friend-parent for so long that when it finally came time to enforce some discipline, it came as a shock and felt like a betrayal.

Where is the limit? Coontown, does that get banned? Sexwithdogs? Incest? SRS? They seemed to hide behind the vail of harassment and not peak behind the curtain of what reddit really is. Reddits problem is they said anything goes, and then years later they saw what they created.

> Reddits problem is they said anything goes, and then years later they saw what they created

Isn't that basically what I said?

> Where is the limit? Coontown, does that get banned? Sexwithdogs? Incest? SRS?

I genuinely do not know, but they need to find that limit, they need to be transparent about how they came to that decision, and they need to be consistent and fair about applying it to subreddits.

Like I said above, they tolerated it for too long, and then swung the hammer down hard. If you don't house train your dog for three years, and then start screaming at it for peeing on the rug, the dog isn't going to react well.

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