Being the CEO of reddit is a political position. And Ellen Pao has too much drama in her life to be a good politician. Losing a sexual harassment case, marrying a crook who stole millions...those are events that don't happen by accident.
Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
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Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#262Earlier 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.
Honestly I'm so disappointed that Reddit's management allowed such a crappy culture to evolve in their forums for so long. I remember signing on in 2010 and just feeling really uncomfortable browsing any of the major subreddits. Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez?
The Reddit founders had very strong ideas about censorship and freedom of speech, and so as a matter of principle, they refused to censor subreddits unless the latter were breaking the law. As far as growth goes, this was probably the right choice, as a lot of Reddit's userbase came from previously marginalized groups who now had a forum for their interests on the Internet.
Note that Hacker News made the opposite choice: it has a variety of mechanisms (slow-banning, hell-banning, quarantine, explicit moderation) that makes it very clear to certain users that they are not welcome here. And it gets shit for it too: if you browse the New page with showdead turned on, you'll see pretty frequent posts from people who are hellbanned complaining about the fascist moderators of this site.
Ultimately, the problem is that for any given slice of humanity, there are significant other slices of humanity that the former find repugnant. And usually vice versa. As a community grows bigger, there's no way to avoid running into the bad apples. I actually think the subreddit system is about as good as it can currently get for a public, open forum.
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#263PR 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…
> Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman. It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman, since a lot of the vitriol predates the past few days.
Uhm, how? Although there were lots of trolls just looking to rile people up, a lot of the criticisms about her allegedly snubbing other females for promotions and baseless lawsuits that amounted to the same exact figure her fraud of a husband was being hounded for were perfectly valid. Or are all those forgiven because she has a vagina?
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#264I 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…
I think it was the right move for many reasons. Should someone hesitate from making the right move if vile people happen to support that move?
I think they should have waited for some cool off or had a 'shadow' CEO or announced this at the same time as a big cut off of some of the worst subs.
This can easily be interpreted as a repudiation of some of the things she tried to do to clean up the site, and that would be a horrible message to send.
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's unfair to compare your un-curated Reddit experience - which you admit is pretty good in a few niche subs - with your highly curated Facebook feed. It's like saying that food in New York is awful because you reached into a trashcan and found a rancid bagel, but is awesome in Chicago because you looked up the nicest restaurant and spent $500 on a meal there.
Not really a matter of fairness or unfairness more an explanation of why I prefer Facebook to Reddit in that it allows that curation.
Reddit also allows curation; you've just used the curation tools on Facebook and have not used those on Reddit.
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#266I 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…
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.
> the vitriol which I kept seeing peripherally... was absolutely appalling.
I'm not a Reddit user, but the vitriol seemed pretty commensurate with what motivated it, which among other things included the despicable (and possibly illegal) firing of an employee for having leukemia (more or less).
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#267Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#268PR 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 thre…
> 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
So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What?
You know the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[1] right? It applies to male and females alike.
And it's pretty scummy how your comment implicates GP said she "deserved to receive those threats", when all he/she did was to point out Pao did an atrocious job and was an awful choice for CEO, and you'll never hear the board admit that.
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#269So can someone summarize the ordeal?
Failure to understand Non-Profit 101. If you rely on unpaid volunteers, you can't afford to enrage them. It doesn't really matter if those volunteers are right or wrong.
Re: Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
#270The 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…
"No, don't you see? This is all about ethics in game journalism."