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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

#451

Post by trhway »

jellicle wrote: post #435
trhway wrote: post #162

Seems like Reddit hired Ellen without checking up her references at the previous job, ie. Kleiner, and now they harvest the same results - insufficient performance and high scandals. (note: there is nothing about her sex here - just read the case materials and you'll see that she behaved just like a jerk at Kleiner - for God sake she complained there that some assistant was using company fax to send brain scans of dy…

If you read the case materials, you discover her peers and superiors generally rated her performance as exceeding expectations.

i did read the materials and discovered that they clearly understood that a rattlesnake they've got on their hands and were very cautious to not get that rattlesnake angry (and thus in particular very carefully worded reviews with nowhere close to real "exceeding expectations") and were just waiting for her to leave on her own ( they even paid her to do that if I remember correctly - ie. she was more worth to them being gone than working for them )

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

#452

Post by musesum »

I wonder if a Law Degree runs counter to running a social network? Where authority bumps up against anarchy. Imagine Peter Thiel running reddit. Both Thiel and Pao have law degrees. Both have been lightning rods. I suspect a JD comes in handy for some ventures. Such as Thiel running Paypal or Pao sourcing funding for RPX. In both of those cases, it is about removing ambiguity. For social nets, the opposite holds true. Because, ambiguity is the main product.

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

#453

Post by danielweber »

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.

Whatever else, she didn't "betray her spouse" because they weren't married at the time. http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletch...

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

#454

Post by magicalist »

Nadya wrote: post #438
dimino wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely and utterly disagree with this opinion, and furthermore find it dangerous for what it suggests - specifically, the idea that a large group of anonymous people can do anything but fall prey to their collective impulse. I would argue that decisions of large bodies of anonymous people are historically and demonstrably inaccurate, misleading, nearsighted, and wholly terrible for not only the decision they're…

I'm confused how having a negative karma on Reddit is not a sign that people on Reddit find you disagreeable. It's a metric designed to showcase one's agreeability or disagreeability. If more people agree with you than disagree with you: karma will largely reflect that. If it's consistently negative, people consistently disagree with you. Having a trend over time allows for a better judgement as karma is a metric tha…

> I'm confused how having a negative karma on Reddit is not a sign that people on Reddit find you disagreeable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias

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

#455

Post by axlprose »

madeofpalk wrote: post #404
axlprose wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize you're commenting on a HN thread for a New York Times piece, right? A piece that casually included terms such as "racist" and "misogynistic" as if they were describing the weather. If those terms do sound natural enough to use in something as casual as describing the weather, then congratulations, you've discovered the dangers that this book tried to highlight.

Are those "racist" and "misogynistic" claims false? Judging by the top post(s), here https://www.reddit.com/r/Ellenpaoinaction/top/?sort=top&t=al... I would say no. That's pretty "racist" and "misogynistic". There was another sub reddit that was worse, but I can't seem to find it on my phone. If you think the NYT article made those claims lightly (I don't) then I think that says more about the state of the Internet a…

The point isn't whether it's "true" or "false", because that will vary depending on who you ask. Yes, even people you find disgusting are legitimate human beings with opinions too. Who are any of us to decide what is "right" or "wrong"? Good journalism is supposed to let you make those decisions on your own, not give them to you.

So in order to be good journalism, it must be objective, and to not describe things in terms of loaded phrases that convey any opinions. The opinions may be right, or they may be wrong, but that has nothing to do with the problem. The problem is the one highlighted in the book, which is that our news isn't getting properly filtered, and as a result, we're being shown rather restricted points of view in our media.

If current media organizations were run with proper journalistic merit, almost 99% of what gets published out there as 'news', would be filed in the editorials section.

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

#456

Post by morbius »

sroerick wrote: post #283
morbius wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. I'm a feminist,and can't stand a lot of the stuff that goes on on reddit. That said, censorship on that website is rampant. Reddit is trying to monetize, and that means stifling speech, especially that speech critical of corporate governance. The issue isn't as black and white a…

But Reddit wasn't attacking corporatocracy or actual censorship. They were just trying to defend their right to be dicks to other people through abusive and hateful subs.

The right to free speech is not the right to speech without consequence. And what obligation does reddit have to preserve "free speech" in the first place? They run the website and it is fully up to them what gets filtered through and what sticks. It's not beholden to the first amendment.

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

#457

Post by geofft »

squeeze wrote: post #380
squeaky-clean wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits. What about the subreddit comparing Ellen Pao to Pyongyang [0]. Jokes about Pao with over a +4000 positive score [1] [2] Jokes comparing Ellen Pao to Hitler. [3] I remember a post to /r/pics or /r/funny of Hitler's Wikipedia page, with Pao's photo instead of Hitler. I ran into some ol…

The way you make the unfavorable comparisons worse is by taking them seriously. I wouldn't suggest taking those co-workers too seriously either - it probably won't help. Ellen Pao wasn't awful, but all-in-all, it's probably a good thing she stepped down. Hopefully, next time there's a huge community changeover or staff change in reddit, everyone will talk through it and about it reasonably, and everyone will be able…

What takeaway should we have about those drunken coworkers? I see roughly three possibilities:

* Their comments were funny / reasonable / etc.; there was nothing wrong with them. GP was wrong to find it disgusting.

* Their comments were bad, but there's nothing we can do about them. Our society involves it being socially acceptable to tell jokes about how people should die because of their inability to articulate clear moderation policies on a popular website, and that's unfortunate, but there's no way that we'll be able to change that social norm. (Or, alternatively, changing that social norm carries unavoidable downsides.)

* Their comments were bad, it's possible to make it no longer socially acceptable to make those jokes, and it should happen.

This doesn't really have anything to do with how seriously we take them.

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

#458

Post by morbius »

monksy wrote: post #289
morbius wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but as far as I know they don't try to silence anyone. See: Project Panda, PREDDITORs, Their brigades ( https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSsucks/comments/14iwvx/its_that_t... ), the fact that they are "exempt from the non participation" requirement when linking to other subs.

That's a two year old link to a sub whose whole intent is to be as diametrically opposed to the SRS sub as possible. If you're trying to strike a point here, I think it'd be much more effective to link to something that's more impartial and up-to-date.

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

#459

Post by AnkhMorporkian »

magicalist wrote: post #428
AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots more to it. While I agree with the banning of FPH, the underlying policy that justified it was deeply flawed. The harassment policy was woefully vague to the point of absurdity. There's the fact that she promised better moderator tools something like 6 months ago, and as we found out today, only last week dedicated employees to work on it; after the defaults revolted. This is a small subset of all of the…

> There's lots more to it and by lots you mean...that's about it. Honestly if "There's the fact that she promised better moderator tools something like 6 months ago" was a good criteria for booting a CEO, Reddit would have had ~20 CEOs by now. That was the actual problem, that mods have never had the tools they need, but that's not why she's resigning/being fired.

No, there's more to it. Because I don't want to drag her personal life into it (which does play a role), there were the huge problems with the AMA app, the new privacy policy (which while I agreed with, many didnt), Reddit Notes (the reddit cryptocurrency; perhaps the most jaw-droppingly stupid move in her tenure), and really, many more things.

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

#460

Post by cthalupa »

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…

>comments about her personal relationships

Is it not a relevant comment on her character that she has married someone who (allegedly) defrauded over a hundred million dollars worth of pension funds? That she later sued a company she was fired from over supposed sexism for the exact amount her husband needed for his legal defense fund? That she lost the case miserably due to a complete lack of evidence? (The case against her husband, on the other hand, looks like it will be quite the open and shut case with mountains of evidence)

I don't care about reddit at all, but I don't understand how anyone can defend her and her husband after one of them (allegedly) ruined the pension funds of thousands of clients who trusted them, and the other tried to provide him with the funding to get off scot free for the actions.

Would you defend Bernie Madoff or someone who had been complicit in trying to keep him unpunished for his crimes?

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