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Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief

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

#841

Post by [deleted] »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #785
vacri wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free speech is meant to protect the most disgusting, heinous, pointless, hateful, ignorant, foolish speech. No it's not. It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas . Rebellious and revolutionary ideas, for example. This is all a canard anyway - Reddit is not the (US) government. They get to set the rules for communication in…

>It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas. The loophole, then, is to define ideas the politically powerful find objectionable as abuse.

[deleted]

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

#842

Post by Veedrac »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #785
vacri wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free speech is meant to protect the most disgusting, heinous, pointless, hateful, ignorant, foolish speech. No it's not. It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas . Rebellious and revolutionary ideas, for example. This is all a canard anyway - Reddit is not the (US) government. They get to set the rules for communication in…

>It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas. The loophole, then, is to define ideas the politically powerful find objectionable as abuse.

I think the point is that protecting abuse is a necessary but unwanted side-effect, not that it shouldn't be protected. This matters because it helps distinguish when such freedoms need to be applied (eg. in government, not my back yard) and how it should be applied.

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

#843

Post by Veedrac »

rndn wrote: post #757
vacri wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free speech is meant to protect the most disgusting, heinous, pointless, hateful, ignorant, foolish speech. No it's not. It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas . Rebellious and revolutionary ideas, for example. This is all a canard anyway - Reddit is not the (US) government. They get to set the rules for communication in…

I wished the ideal of free speech would include the ideal of being open to discussion (perhaps even the scientific method). I think many movements fail in that regard, for example it was pretty much impossible to have reasonable discussions with FPH subscribers. You were immediately downvoted when you tried to argue against it. If people are completely ignorant towards alternative, consistent points of view, they don…

Forcing people to listen, act in certain ways or to follow specific practices is basically the opposite of freedom.

Saying that people should be open to your arguments privileges those ideas you yourself hold. How do you tell which arguments get such treatment?

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

#844

Post by keedot »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #784
keedot wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct, it's an ignorant argument, and I see it posted all over the place. I wish America had a better education system, because it drowns out the real conversations that should be happening around free speech. You have the right to say whatever you want, you do not have the right to say it in my home. I'm curious as to whether or not these individuals understand this, or are just another level of troll tryin…

> you do not have the right to say it in my home. Furthermore, I do have the right to say it "in public". But, where is that "public" on the internet? I can make a website - a home - and invite other people to come visit me and listen to me ramble, or respond etc. But there is no public space, is there? And if not, should there be? Most people don't own the homes they live in. Yet the landlord still doesn't get to te…

There are indeed public spaces on the internet, many governments and government bodies have sites that are public where you can file a petition or voice a concern.

Most people (63%) own their homes in America, and there are protections in place for people who rent. Your landlord cannot monitor you.

When it comes to the mall though, it's more a matter of scope and scale. Overhearing something in a mall affects a handful of individuals and the intent was not to broadcast. If you stand up on a table in the cafeteria and start spouting hate speech, you can and will be escorted out by security.

The internet is different, because you cannot accidentally overhear a conversation. Said anywhere on the internet, especial a place like reddit of HN, it is viewable by the entirety of internet users. So direct comparisons to the physical world will always fall short.

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

#845

Post by mistermann »

vehementi wrote: post #824
mistermann wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'm not at all aware of the details of this but I would like to learn - is this common knowledge? > Yes, see the 3rd FAQ of the announcement post: Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals. If a subreddit has been banned for harassment, you will see that in the ban notice. The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate[…

So when I said FAQ I was referring to the FAQ links at the bottom, which deal explicitly with SRS (see also https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huf... ) and with brigading vs harassment. By FAQ I did not mean "paragraph". > Which is a blatant lie, as everyone knows. I don't know that, and upon further inspection it is not obviously a lie, and is actually pretty reasonable. How did you determine t…

Ok I lied. I can't resist.

Remember I wrote:

The so-called misogynists (I'm of the opinion that much of the brutal words written about her were a large part tongue-in-cheek, deliberate over the top absurdity, not that that excuses it) are a part of reddit.

Today we see this on the front page:

Redditors that worked le porn industry, was there sex involved? Did you get to have sex? Sex sex sex sex sex

https://www.reddit.com/r/circlejerk/comments/3cxzd0/redditor...

Top comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/circlejerk/comments/3cxzd0/redditor...

"Can confirm, had sex. My stage name is: Ellen pao Le edit: ayyy lepao im grill jet fuel."

Now I don't expect you to necessarily appreciate this this sense of humor, but people like Ellen and you (as far as I can tell) almost seem completely oblivious to the reality that this is humor. People have all sorts of important duties during the day, many people like to have a place to go in their downtime to participate in general absurdity free from the fucking incessant purely invented social constructs and nonsense restrictions we have to put up with in our working lives.

For example, there were many posts generally along the lines of "This cunt." linked to a photo of Ellen Pao. Personally, I find that quite funny, because it is so crude, and requires such little effort that you're taking a comedic risk even saying it. Well, not on reddit, but in standup comedy you would. Now, do you think that person thought Ellen Pao was equivalent to a vagina (or some "misogynistic" equivalent), or do you think maybe they were taking the piss?

The cultural disconnection from the real world of some people is vast, there are several jokes with a lot of truth in them about physicists, mathematicians, etc whose scientific worldview is so inconsistent with reality that it causes a normal human to involuntarily push large volumes of air in and out of their lungs in rapid sequence while contorting their face into unusual shapes.

I'm just interested in what makes people that disagree with me tick. Perhaps I'm totally wrong, it could be. But this idea that you're wrong, but I won't tell you why you're wrong doesn't sit well with me. It's not just a problem with reddit, it's a problem with planet earth.

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

#846

Post by squeaky-clean »

natmaster wrote: post #373
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…

What exactly is sexist about comparing someone to Hilter? Would the sexism change if the person being attacked fit under another demographic? Is it OK to criticize say Christopher Columbus because he is a white male. Please enlighten me.

It's not sexist, it's just plain offensive.

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

#847

Post by smsm42 »

keedot wrote: post #770
nathanvanfleet wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're correct, it's an ignorant argument, and I see it posted all over the place. I wish America had a better education system, because it drowns out the real conversations that should be happening around free speech. You have the right to say whatever you want, you do not have the right to say it in my home. I'm curious as to whether or not these individuals understand this, or are just another level of troll tryin…

If you're looking for fair discussion about free speech, the US education establishment is the last place you want to look. They are completely overrun by PC moral panic, and not only real dissent and vigorous discussion representing diverse points is not welcomed, be it about free speech or any other topic, even mild critique from the friendly side or discomfort with exposure to unsettling thoughts is intolerable. E.g. see: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

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

#848

Post by nindalf »

dimino wrote: post #814
nindalf wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm curious about your first two points -- are you privvy to information about those firings that the general public is not privy to? Because the general public, for legal reasons, is not privy to most of the information surrounding those firings, and it strikes me as interesting that you have an opinion related to them despite not having any information.

To clarify those two points

* I resented that she fired Victoria, because I liked Victoria and what she brought to reddit. I didn't speculate on why she was fired at all. But let me speculate a little now - it wasn't for performance reasons judging by what every single person who has worked with Victoria says.

* I relayed what the employee in question said about it on reddit. If its a question of trusting what he says or what Pao says, I'll err on the side of the former, because of the duplicity that Pao has exhibited in recent months.

I hope that clears it up.

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

#849

Post by dredmorbius »

seanflyon wrote: post #482
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…

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. We have decided that no one is more trustworthy to pick our leaders than large bodies of anonymous people.

Is it, really? I mean, beyond Winston's quip, what empirical evidence do you have to support that?

Democracies have been known for only a few brief periods of human existence. They emerged for a few hundred years, in a very limited sense, in one city-state within Greece, 2500 years ago. And then disappeared until just over 200 years ago, with some spread since.

Fewer than half the people on Earth today live in democracies (though it's close: 48%), only 12.5% live in full democracies. Far more live in autocratic regimes than any other of the forms measured by the Democracy Index: 37.6%.

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

The fastest growing economy in the world is solidly autocratic: China. Despite the claims of the benefits of both democracy and capitalism, many critical advances have come from countries which lacked one or both institutions: Nazi Germany developed jet aircraft and missiles, Communist Russia was the first to orbit satellites and put man in space.

I'm not opposed to democracy. But it seems it's got a few challenges as well.

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

#850

Post by dredmorbius »

JohnBooty wrote: post #839
zmb_ wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally respect freedom of speech, except hate. The problem is that as soon as you draw such a line, you need to appoint a censor to determine what qualifies as "hate". As Christopher Hitchens asked: "To whom would you want to delegate the task to decide for you what you could read? To relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?" Typically this job falls to the public prosecutors.…

> The problem is that as soon as you draw such a line The line needs to be drawn, though. As the saying goes, "Your freedoms end where my freedoms begin." At some point, hate speech most definitely infringes upon the reader's rights. The canonical example is yelling "FIRE! FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater and causing a stampede; your right to free speech doesn't trump everybody else's right to be safe.

I'd very strongly suggest you read the circumstances of * Schenck v. United States. While I also find the issue of fraudulently harmful speech a reasonable bar, the case itself concerned something rather different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

[A] United States Supreme Court decision concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I. A unanimous Supreme Court, in a famous opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concluded that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense.

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