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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

#701

Post by KVFinn »

nindalf wrote: post #602
jellicle wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shows to me that she was dogged by misogynists and MRAs excited by the discrimination lawsuit, from the start of her Reddit tenure through to the end. In a similar fashion, if Barack Obama posted something like "Mom and apple pie are both great.", it would be downvoted by his political foes and upvoted by his political allies. That should not be taken as an indication that "the community" opposes or disagrees with…

I see a lot of comments like yours claiming that the hate was only because she's a minority. I get the feeling such people find it unacceptable to dislike a woman or a black/Asian person regardless of what they did. I disliked her for * Firing Victoria, who took AMAs to the next level. I enjoyed them a ton. * Firing an employee for having leukemia - http://redd.it/3c0idl * Using corporate weasel words instead of havi…

>Firing Victoria, who took AMAs to the next level. I enjoyed them a ton.

The Victoria specific AMAs tended to be short, done on the phone where she types responses, and oriented around'My new movie is out Friday don't miss it' instead of a conversation. I prefer the raw format myself.

>Firing an employee for having leukemia - http://redd.it/3c0idl

That this became the battle-flag for everyone to pitchfork is seriously appalling:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868887

>Using corporate weasel words instead of having the guts to be honest - "We're banning behaviour, not ideas"

I'm personally only familiar with the banning of /neofags because I know people who were targeted and harassed by that reddit. It was clearly banned for the behavior of the mods in the reddit, and not for content, as evidenced by other reddits with much worse content not being banned at the same time.

>She derided her detractors as being a very tiny minority without realising that the most active people are the ones creating and moderating the content that helps reddit thrive.

What does this even mean, all her detractors were also the ones creating the content? Most of the reddits complained about wanting more powerful mod tools, not less control: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cuw90/megathrea...

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

#702

Post by ketralnis »

WalterBright wrote: post #298
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.

I'd rather have appalling speech than censored speech. The idea is to not confuse supporting a person's free speech with endorsing his views. Also, reddit is a private company and so is not obliged to provide a platform for anyone's free speech, that also is a facet of freedom.

> I'd rather have appalling speech than censored speech

If we were talking about what's legal to publish in your own newspaper, I agree.

If we're talking about what's appropriate to force others to view by brigading with a small number of people to take over a website to use it as its own platform to harass its CEO, I disagree.

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

#703

Post by ketralnis »

geomark wrote: post #687
Veedrac wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your version of free speech means allowing anything to be said anywhere, I don't want it. The principle of free speech I subscribe to is allowing anyone a place such that those who want to listen, can. In essence, to prevent one party silencing a communication between two other parties. Reddit need not be that place.

That's a good definition. But even that approach will fail when those with power define the "place such that those who want to listen, can" to be so small that nobody can find it. An example is the so-called free speech zones at some colleges that are small designated spots far from earshot of the entire campus population.

> that approach will fail when those with power define the "place such that those who want to listen, can" to be so small that nobody can find it

Okay. But reddit isn't "those with power". reddit isn't making it illegal to do it elsewhere.

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

#704

Post by jeo1234 »

maxlybbert wrote: post #614
jarfil wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reddit is legally allowed to censor all they want. Some people, especially people younger than me, like a version of the world where somebody smoothes off the rough edges and hides unsightly things. I think it feels too much like Disneyland. Reddit spent years building a freewheeling culture. Pao decided to impose standards on that, and her guiding principles weren't well articulated. In the end, it was a really bad…

> Pao decided to impose standards on that, and her guiding principles weren't well articulated.

I think you nailed it there. I'm not a Reddit user, but from what I have read there never seemed to be clear set of guidelines that were evenly enforced by the Reddit staff.

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

#705

Post by [deleted] »

puranjay wrote: post #200

As someone who frequents only a couple of subs on Reddit (which were completely insulated from this fiasco), I have no idea why people were so pissed off. So she made a bad decision. Big f cking deal. "She's killing the community!". Well, if your idea of 'community' is making public rape threads (while you use a throwaway) and threaten to kill a person, then maybe your community deserves to die. Reddit has a lot* of…

[deleted]

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

#706

Post by DanBC »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #243
oldmanjay wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with the notion that those running reddit suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance over this issue. They've been acting in extremely odd ways for some time now. Actions like the banning of subreddits for the actions of a few bad actors belie the notion that this is how you and they describe it.

You were modded down, but I don't know why. On what planet does it make sense to ban /r/fatpeoplehate while permitting /r/CoonTown? If you don't have a coherent content policy -- and no sane person could argue that Reddit does -- then you're better off with none at all.

Fatpeople hate was banned for brigading - for actions not ideas - because fatpeople hate would link to real world people and real world profiles and thousands over users would visit and vote and hundreds of users would leave harassing messages.

Ellen got so much shot for the "we're banning actions not ideas" quote (in this thread even) yet here's an example of it being used - leaving absolutely vile subs live because they don't brigade and banning subs when they do brigade and she's getting shit for that too.

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

#707

Post by studentrob »

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…

If Reddit can get back to focusing on positive things, like reddit gifts, admins with good community relations, and not firing people who have cancer, I think they'll be in good shape.

If Reddit continues to focus on cracking down on the negativity that exists on the site, it will give the negative voices a bigger stage.

I think they will be able to get back to doing positive, fun things, and the negativity will be drowned out.

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

#708

Post by rayalez »

Sometimes internet-hate is completely arbitrary.

Maybe she screwed up some things, I don't know, but from reading posts on reddit it felt like an arbitrary cat video going viral - the amount of attention was not warranted by the "causes".

Remember PG getting all the shit on twitter because of his misunderstood statement about women?

Outrage is a powerful emotion, and people enjoy participating in revolutions when it doesn't require any effort and can be done from the safety of a computer screen.

I'm pretty sure 99% of people participating in this shitstorm had no good reason to care about it at all, and did it just because it felt "fun" to participate in something like this.

Also - way to teach an angry mob that they can get what they want if they yell about it enough by giving in to their demands.

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

#709

Post by Eupolemos »

ketralnis wrote: post #702
WalterBright wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have appalling speech than censored speech. The idea is to not confuse supporting a person's free speech with endorsing his views. Also, reddit is a private company and so is not obliged to provide a platform for anyone's free speech, that also is a facet of freedom.

> I'd rather have appalling speech than censored speech If we were talking about what's legal to publish in your own newspaper, I agree. If we're talking about what's appropriate to force others to view by brigading with a small number of people to take over a website to use it as its own platform to harass its CEO, I disagree.

I absolutely agree with you. Free Speech is not a thing on private boards or sites on the internet. Moderation is a good thing if you want a healthy online environment and conversation.

That said, I think the moderation Pao symbolised on Reddit as a whole was a very wrong move. The Community certainly did. All the subreddits are individually moderated and the subreddits are opt-in; there's very little need for an overarching moderation of Reddit major.

Combine this with the rules for moderation being so vague everyone was asking what they actually were, and the reason given was "safety". Safety?

To me, "Safety" is a red-cloth term. It smells of the agenda used to rule the masses by fear and security, and to me Reddit is the exact opposite. But in reality, it was probably just an honest answer to Reddit's Community and investors both, that they wanted Reddit to be a safe product.

Well, nobody joined Reddit because it was "safe". It's the wild west of the interwebs, subreddits progressively darker as you find more weird stuff and you have to tell yourself "no - I don't need that" (who hasn't ventured to r/aww - darkness comes in many shades).

tl;dr Reddit is set up as a wild west with moderated towns, it is counter-productive to clamp down on everything with "safety" as the rallying cry.

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

#710

Post by vonklaus »

mc32 wrote: post #594
multinglets wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's say she sucked at her job. Let the org fire her. These actions were the result of thought that they needed to heed public opinion. As if officers need to walk on eggshells. What should matter ate results rather than dictated by the winds of public opinion. I wish the board, management, etc. in these situations would who resolve and say, no, sorry, this is our choice, we stand by it. But no, we see them capitula…

#1 rule in tech: listen to your users.
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