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

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

#771

Post by arrrg » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

growupkids wrote: post #745

arrrg wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Censorship is awesome. It creates and shapes places that are just great and pleasant all around. Being an excellent censor is a great ability and there are sadly way too few out there who can give a clear voice (not in the sense of being one voice, necessarily, though that can also be great!) to something and be really excellently opinionated about their censorship. I want more great censorship, not les…

Perhaps I'm missing something. How would you know if someone is an excellent censor (I.e. They only censor "bad" speech, and not "good" speech) if then intent is to shield you from the "bad" speech. Wouldn't you then not know what they censored? Specifically, it seems to me that if you're shielded from seeing that they censored, then they could also be censoring "good" speech too. So the only way it seems you could e…

I don’t. I just accept that sometimes I just cannot know the absolute truth and that’s that.

But I do have the ability to trust people and I know when I enjoy something.

So, this all might sound very abstract, but I do know that I like the censors (they call themselves editors) working for certain newspapers I like. I trust them to make good decisions, partly just because I don’t have time to make those decisions myself.

And that’s obviously not perfect – but this whole nerd dream of provable correctness and absolute, guaranteed access to the truth all the time … it’s all unachievable bullshit anyway. Sometime you just don’t know. Sometimes you just have to live with that. I live with it and I like it.

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

#772

Post by dmix » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:00 PM UTC

vanessa98 wrote: post #272

notsony wrote: post #44

> Sam Altman, a member of Reddit’s board, said he personally appreciated Ms. Pao’s efforts during her two years working at the start-up. “Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said. This is clearly nonsense, otherwise there wouldn't have been a grassroots campaign to remove Ellen Pao from her role. If Sam Altman honestly believes that Ellen did a "phenomenal" job, he should reconside…

Seems like just yesterday! http://blog.samaltman.com/a-new-team-at-reddit > I am delighted to announce the new team we have in place. Ellen Pao will be stepping up to be interim CEO. Because of her combination of vision, execution, and leadership, I expect that she’ll do an incredible job.

Someone's ready for a career in politics.

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

#773

Post by scrollaway » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:03 PM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #656

scrollaway wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked, verbatim, "What the fuck is this?". Parent answered. But somehow, parent is to blame for not answering the rest of your very rhetorical-looking post.

Troll harder.

This wasn't a troll. You asked, got an answer, and you weren't happy with it. And you call people trolls for calling you out on it. This isn't 4chan.

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

#774

Post by justizin » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:11 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #610

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…

Some griefers did key on that. But overall, she was perceived as opposing free speech, which is a core value for numerous (maybe even most) Reddit users.

FWIW, harassment isn't free speech, even when you're talking about the government, and aside from basic decency, the company could be responsible, esp if it facilitated people actually following through with threats.

It is unreasonably acceptable for death, rape, and other threats to be used as a form of outspoken criticism online, and as an outspoken critic, I don't appreciate being lumped in.

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

#775

Post by Nemcue » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:15 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #466

city41 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It completely and totally dominated /r/all for days, even weeks. /r/all is an aggregate of the most popular posts for the entire site, so I disagree only a small subset were affected. Maybe in number of subreddits, but the subreddits that were affected are absolutely gigantic.

Most people are completely unaware of /r/all

You say this with certainty? Do you know this to be true?

Because I seriously doubt it.

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

#776

Post by Nemcue » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

morbius wrote: post #646

Jimmy wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because there's no object to their jokes. It's just exaggerated humor not at the expense of anyone.

Except it is at the expense of people, so that's not true at all.

SRS are notorious for brigading and messing with peoples lives.

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

#777

Post by justizin » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:25 PM UTC

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.…

> 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 the line needs to be drawn more clearly than that, because we should have populist control over companies.

I'm more concerned about companies that really impact us, for example huge banks, energy conglomerates, people behind the TPP and TiSA.

But when the leader of a company who publishes the words of its' customers - a complex relationship, indeed - tries to curb some of the harmful speech of those customers, I don't think it's a reasonable populist standard to say that people supporting that speech can oppose it.

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

#778

Post by dorfsmay » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:25 PM UTC

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #47

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…

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.

If you follows only subreddits focussed on interrests you have, reddit is a good source of information, not unlike Usenet 20 years ago.

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

#779

Post by kaonashi » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #611

kaonashi wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that out of the ordinary? What has any reddit ceo done to make reddit better?

Alexis Ohanian was chairman (and possibly CEO) and Steve Huffman was the original CEO. They made reddit better by creating it. Yishan Wong was also a CEO (prior to Pao) having been an engineer at facebook. His tenure was also controversial although not as much as Pao.

So the answer is "no, that's not out of the ordinary".

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

#780

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:29 PM UTC

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #767

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.

Free speech is between you and the government. If a company that runs a forum says it bans people for abusive comments there's nothing to do with free speech. We see with Reddit that the ugliest users are the ones that are the loudest and drown out everyone else.

...and Reddit isn't even banning vile human beings - there are a bunch of subs for hating fat people and other worse subs.

Reddit is only banning subs that brigade.