Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by genericuser » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

ElComradio wrote: post #100

PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted. We cannot trust Altman is being honest that he appreciated her efforts. We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. All of this that comes out of spokesmen is carefully crafted as a result of a numbers game. When do we hear "so and so CEO did a horrible job and was forced out by the board."? Never. So are we to believe there is no such thing as a terrible…

No one said give her a pass, it was simply said the 'vitriol was appalling.' That simply means that the denizens of the internet when taken as a collective are horrible people who can not voice criticism in a civil manner.

Assuming she was completely horrible and a terrible CEO... Assuming that! How could someone's lack of ability to do their job (or anything else for that matter) make the type of death and rape threats that this 'vitriol' was seen being expressed with less appalling?

You are falling into a common pit where you may think it was good she has been replaced, and you may be right, and gosh darn it you are certainly entitled to that opinion. But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible, you become part of the problem by basically saying she deserved to receive those threats.

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

#252

Post by MBCook » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

Joeboy wrote: post #178

oldmanjay wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has only watched this popcorn feast, I have the sense that she was the subject of vitriol primarily for taking actions that people didn't like. Many of the insults may well have targeted her gender, but that is not the same thing at all. I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.

It seems like the major source of antipathy towards her was the firing of Victoria Taylor, which happened on her watch, but was actually done by a man who is still at the company, and nobody seems to want him fired. It's entirely possible I have some or all of my facts wrong, but this is what I understand to be the case.

That's when most people started hearing about it outside of Reddit, but I guarantee there is been strong hate before any of that happened. And it really does seem gender-based, or at least those are all the primary attacks.

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

#253

Post by jodah » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:35 PM UTC

return0 wrote: post #184

kolbe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between the lines and viewing her resignation in the context of what she's had to go through in the past few months, she was harassed out of the job by the user base.

E. Pao and Brendan Eich are the two polar examples why the word 'harassment' has lost its meaning.

From my reading, this wasn't about harassment. It was about missteps, many of them. Needless to say, her various apologies were not spurred by harassment.

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

#254

Post by muglug » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:35 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #236

muglug wrote: post #72

Will the anti-corporate brigades in these large community-driven sites make turning a profit impossible in the long-run?

I don't think so, because the degree of "anti corporate" sentiment varies dramatically from sub to sub. The thing is, it almost doesn't even make sense to talk about "The Reddit Community" as though it was any one, unified, cohesive whole, because it largely isn't.

Agreed, but there's a subset of the reddit community that passionately rallies against comprehensive attempts to make the site more commercial in nature. And now, with this resignation, they're likely to feel emboldened.

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

#255

Post by yen223 » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:36 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #218

mynameisvlad wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, proof? The fact that she's been actually active on the site under her own account shows that clearly she knows how to use the site, so that argument alone is moot. I don't know how you can prove she didn't like the users unless she straight up said that.

https://np.reddit.com/r/FaithInHumanity/comments/39ee4c/char... She tried to share a link to a private message. That's the equivalent of my mom emailing me and saying, "Here's the picture - c:\\user\desktop\pic.jpg" - it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the site works. Then everyone who replied was shadowbanned and every post was deleted. So no, she literally didn't know how to use the site.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_ol...

The new CEO doesn't know how to make lists. Is he going to catch shit for it?

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

#256

Post by sama » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

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

She walked in to a hot mess of a situation after the previous CEO resigned on the spot and kept the company from falling apart (which I thought was a live concern at the time). You try doing that some day.

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

#257

Post by jonathankoren » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #231

jonathankoren wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. What the fuck is this? And how is this relevant? And when was the last time you heard a similar comment about a man?

She had a affair with a married senior partner who was also a lecherous jerk at her prior job, betraying both her spouse and her fellow cheaters spouse. Then when he, the lecher, was under fire for his treatment of another female subordinate she defended him.

I know the story. What I want to know is how this is relevant to her tenure as CEO. Which you've failed to specify.

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

#258

Post by morbius » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

generic_user wrote: post #221

The knife cuts both ways. The clickbait media and various groups are trying to paint the now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again. Over 200,000 people with legitimate concerns sign a petition to have Pao step down yet they still carry on with there charade. People are sick and tired of the media and a small group of militant activists trying…

> now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again

This is a pretty accurate narrative. You may not agree, but casual misogyny is incredibly pervasive on most defaults, and it's fairly prevalent within the smaller, community-based subs as well.

> small group of militant activists trying to silence people who they disagree with

If you're referring to SRS, they're annoying and take themselves far too seriously, but as far as I know they don't try to silence anyone.

> The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits.

I'm not even going to address how laughably absurd your characterization of consistent harassment, abuse, and terrifyingly legitimate rape and death threats as "criticism" is. Most people were upset with Pao because she was part of an executive decision to shut down FatPeopleHate and a couple of other abusive subreddits. It's quite a stretch to say that she was solely responsible for this decision, and even then, it's sobering that people would respond with scathing, fiery, and highly toxic personal and threatening attacks on a decision that was intended to help people be kinder to each other -- and worse, lobbed on someone that had at most 2/5ths of the executive power to make that decision.

The media didn't turn the shaky relationship between reddit's users and their administrators into a black-and-white affair. Reddit itself did, by using Pao as a scapegoat to attack everything they saw as antithetical to freedom of hatred and abuse under the guise of "free speech."

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

#259

Post by gjulianm » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #93

I don't like this at all. Even if she wasn't the right person (I don't know), all the worst elements of the site are going to see this as a victory for their awful behavior and it's going to get worse. The people who attacked her with sexism and comments about her personal relationships. The people who supported FPH even though they were attacking people in real life and off Reddit, not just posting comments in their…

The fact that she "stood up" against some of the worst of Reddit shows that she was not the best suited for the job. Now before I continue, let me clarify that those banned subreddits were awful, as awful as all the threats and insults she received.

However, I wonder what was she thinking when she banned those subreddits, specially FPH. They were a bunch of trolls: did she think they were going to just shut up and stop harassing people? Nope, they weren't going to. Moreover, as the ban reasons were not completely clear (they were a bad behavioured sub, but the admins didn't show a clear proof of harassment with support of the mods) some redditors decided to support them, because hating corporate is always cool. A wonderful mix of a big community, with a high percentage of trolls, plus the "free speech" flag, plus the "corporate is destroying Reddit". The result is the chaos that happened in the days after the ban and the obvious damage to her reputation.

That was not the better solution to the FPH problem. There were other possibilities. For example, removing them from the front page to cut their growth in the early stages. Or, in the moment the imgur thing happened, issue a clear warning to the mods and tell them that the next offense meant a ban (they could've avoided further harassment or maybe could have banned them without such community backslash, giving the rest of the users a "see? they're bad, we told you, we had no other option" explanation).

But even with a bad decision on the FPH ban, she could have survived if it weren't for the /u/chooter thing. A CEO in a delicate position, with part of the community with doubts about her and another part directly hating her... firing an appreciated admin wasn't the best idea at all. I wouldn't have thought it would have created such a big outcry, but it was clear it was going to revive the Ellen Pao hating circlejerk. It was a suicidal move.

And, as you say, the bad part of these suicidal moves is not only the hate and the threats she received and the fact that she had to resign, but also the fact that is going to be taken as a victory for the childish trolls of Reddit. Basically, Pao screwed up really bad, and I think she made things worse in the harassment/hate field.

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

#260

Post by colinbartlett » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #59

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an occasional user of reddit, this whole ordeal has confirmed the reason why I prefer not to hang out in its forums. I have no idea whether Ellen was a capable CEO, but the vitriol which I kept seeing peripherally (through other news articles and here on HN) was absolutely appalling.

It depends on the subreddits. With my subscriptions I barely noticed the whole thing.

I've been a heavy reddit user for 8 years and I did not know about this until I read about it in the New York Times. It's really a small subset of the reddits that were touched by the entire ordeal.