Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 877 posts

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

#581

Post by CamperBob2 »

mcphage wrote: post #553
CamperBob2 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. Given that there was no blatantly illegal content involved, there are only two possible reasons for not treating these two subreddits the same. Either the admins are a) clueless nitwits who don't know what's going on with their own site, or b) sympathetic to one but not the other. Which do you believe is the correct explanation? Can you see any other possibilities?

If you're in my house, I'm going to hold you to a much higher standard than "not blatantly illegal". If you resent Reddit doing the same, well, the Internet isn't lacking for dank underbellies.

So I'm allowed to hold Klan meetings in your house, as long as I don't make fun of any overweight minorities?

Because that's what the admins have basically said, by their actions.

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

#582

Post by nindalf »

jarfil wrote: post #552
dmfdmf wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At last, a voice of reason in hundreds of pointless comments. Free speech is a principle and people should be free to say whatever they want no matter how disgusting or distasteful to the majority or mainstream. This is the ideal of a free society and people who can't make the distinction between supporting the principle and yet rejecting the advocates of idiocy are implicitly advocating some form of government censo…

Freedom of speech != freedom to force anyone to listen to you. As long as you are free to create your own community where you can say whatever you want, there is no need for any other community to listen to you.

Nor was anyone forced to listen. I find the default subs pretty low quality, so I stopped subscribing to them years ago. So the only things I read about were the books, video games and programming languages I like. If you had a different experience, then I sympathise with you, but don't go reading a thread filled with utter crap and then claim that someone forced you to listen.

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

#583

Post by zardeh »

chinpokomon wrote: post #551
ryanlol wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the reddit administration interfere with communities ran by third parties? IRC networks are still running just fine with minimal intervention.

Or for that matter newsgroups. I guess since newsgroups are subscribed by the carrier, IRC might still be the better example.

there is no /r/all for irc or newsgroups.

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

#584

Post by madeofpalk »

axlprose wrote: post #573
orbitur wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point isn't whether it's "true" or "false", because that will vary depending on who you ask. Please, it seems like you're the one who needs to be honest. The most vocal, outraged reddit users are clearly sexist. Here's the top most used words in the petition. Sure, let's NOT use the word "sexism" here, since it's kind of unclear. https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3cetav/i_made_...

It seems you missed what I tried to convey. I explicitly stated that the issue is objectiveness, and subjective terms, by definition cannot be objective. You can gather all the data in the world about reddit users and their mannerisms, but that does not change the way the logic behind 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' work.

I think the overwhelming majority of our society will agree that the mentioned behaviour was misogynistic. That makes it a fairly objective statement. You can still disagree with it (in the same way people disagree with other objective statements, like vaccines and autism), but that doesn't make it subjective.

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

#585

Post by brazzledazzle »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #530
mc32 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if she was a bad leader or not. My big concern is this populist approach to firing people. Enough people don't like a company officer? Cobble a "movement" and generate enough controversy to force them to step down. I think unless they egregiously violate company policy or violate the law or do something which would bring damage to a company it should be up to the company to direct the fate of an officer.…

If you live by the public opinion, you die by the public opinion.

That's the unfortunate reality of being a leader. It would be nice if it weren't so but the world is very far from nice.

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

#586

Post by multinglets »

sbilstein wrote: post #222
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.

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?

> really uncomfortable

I know what you mean. I logged into /r/funny one day and someone had used the "b" word. I was just really concerned and uncomfortable with how things were going. What did you end up doing?

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

#587

Post by mirimir »

jarfil wrote: post #552
dmfdmf wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At last, a voice of reason in hundreds of pointless comments. Free speech is a principle and people should be free to say whatever they want no matter how disgusting or distasteful to the majority or mainstream. This is the ideal of a free society and people who can't make the distinction between supporting the principle and yet rejecting the advocates of idiocy are implicitly advocating some form of government censo…

Freedom of speech != freedom to force anyone to listen to you. As long as you are free to create your own community where you can say whatever you want, there is no need for any other community to listen to you.

As I've said in another subthread, Reddit is not a single community, but rather numerous communities. All users are free to listen to what they like, and to not listen (or even block) what they don't like. It's rather like Usenet, with a Reddit account being equivalent to a news server account.

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

#588

Post by multinglets »

mc32 wrote: post #505
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 don't know if she was a bad leader or not. My big concern is this populist approach to firing people. Enough people don't like a company officer? Cobble a "movement" and generate enough controversy to force them to step down. I think unless they egregiously violate company policy or violate the law or do something which would bring damage to a company it should be up to the company to direct the fate of an officer.…

If she weren't a woman, I would be tempted to say it's almost . . .

It's almost like she just sucked at her job and the public backlash and getting fired were both predictable consequences of that fact.

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

#589

Post by Jimmy »

morbius wrote: post #569
golergka wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's certainly a white fraternity feel in a lot of reddits, so I can imagine how people can feel disconnect to it. But /r/shitredditsays, well... I was subscribed to it for some time, and the posts themselves do a good job at noticing really bad behaviour on reddit sometimes — but then I discovered the comments there, and I must say, it feels like half of the users of this sub are trolls who pretend to be THE wors…

The SRS sidebar makes it pretty clear that the whole SJW façade is exactly that: a façade. They obviously have legitimate complaints but hyperbolise everything to poke fun at it.

They don't accept the "it's just a joke" excuse from their targets, why should we accept it from them?

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

#590

Post by ThomPete »

nopenopeyep wrote: post #445
nostrademons wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cho…

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. Are you kidding? None of those make it the least bit clear to the users. HN is the most passive-aggressively moderated site I've ever seen. Also, hell-banning non-spammers is about the most cruel thing you can do. By extension of holding Pao responsible for al…

But the moderation is part of what keeps it a fairly enjoyable experience still IMO.
Post reply on HN