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We apologize

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Re: We apologize

#171

Post by x0x0 »

celticninja wrote: post #165
x0x0 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making this far too personal. Reddit is and was a shitty business; afaik, they lost money every year at least through 2012 (Yishan released not raw numbers but a graph showing expenses > revenue). Reddit has to change: at some point, they will either make money, become a billionaire's hobby or vanish. That's completely separate from the fact that certain people were happy to host jailbait and stolen celebrity…

Yes it is not a profitable business, that is not my concern or that of its users. If reddit went under tomorrow and disappeared from the web, users would find a new site (voat.co, some other reddit clone, it doesnt matter) and congregate there. Are they allowed to monetise their site? Yes of course they are. However there is a fine line between monestising a social media site and killing it. Just look at Digg, they t…

my contention -- perhaps not clear enough -- is a ceo the users like will be unable to monetize reddit. After all, ceos the users liked failed for what, 9 years running: 2005 to 2014?

Re: We apologize

#172

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

psychometry wrote: post #129
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take a misogynist or a racist to be upset to see a well-liked person fired abruptly, especially with no apparent cause. There is a lot of stored-up discontent with the way Reddit is run, some of it even goes back to when Yishan was CEO. It's a fool's errand to try to please all of such a huge userbase, but Pao seems to have been able to unite some very unlikely factions against her.

You say there is no apparent cause, but you're not privy to the details and have no right to be unless you were a reddit employee working closely with her. It would be bad form to publicize the details of anyone's firing, regardless of the position and company. The only legitimately complaint in all of this is that there wasn't any notice to people who depending on the fired person. That doesn't even begin to explain…

>but you're not privy to the details

That's why I said there is no apparent cause.

>not privy to the details and have no right to be

Strictly speaking that's correct. Here in the real world, Reddit might weigh more carefully how their operational decisions have affected actual operations, as opposed to continuing to operate as if they have total control of every aspect of Reddit.

>It would be bad form to publicize the details of anyone's firing

Of course it is, but keeping silent won't stop the speculation. Something tells me that decorum isn't the reason for Reddit's silence. I suspect they are merely worried about exposing themselves to the possibility of a lawsuit. In that light, it may have been better to come up with a more creative way to move /u/chooter out of her role.

>The only legitimately complaint in all of this is that there wasn't any notice to people who depending on the fired person.

That is one of the legitimate complaints about /u/chooter's firing. Like it or not, it is perfectly legitimate for anyone, especially Reddit mods and users to have and express an opinion about Reddit and their operations. That's kind of what Reddit is, a place for people to express opinions; I am not sure how that aspect escaped the notice of management. And, yeah, Reddit also dropped the ball by not having a contingency plan for /u/chooter's departure and they probably don't have contingency plans for other employees in critical roles.

>That doesn't even begin to explain the outrage, though.

That's because the firing of /u/chooter was just the catalyst that began the release of a lot of pent-up discontent.

Re: We apologize

#173

Post by killface »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #2

They are trying to reframe the discussion around the idea that they failed in communicating. What they failed in, actually, was keeping an astounding and dedicated employee their users loved.

The AMA-specific portions were not (originally) the primary complaints. The mods reframed the discussion into "AMA liaison and mod tools" but it was about so much more than that. The admins would make certain users mods of subreddits, who then un-modded everybody else and basically took it over. The rampant censorship of non-mainstream opinions (even if you vehemently disagree with them), articles about Pao's shady business dealings being deleted, articles about the Ponzi scheme Pao's husband is involved in being deleted, articles about Pao's sleeping with married men (while married herself) to get ahead in her career, her trivial and frivolous "gender discrimination" lawsuit, the massive use of shadowbanning in the last couple years that is inconsistently applied, and the list can go on forever.

Basically reddit was a cesspool of villainy for a while, and now she's turning it into a cesspool of SJW/"Mod-approved language". I'll take the former any day of the week. When you're afraid to speak your mind because you might get shadowbanned or a mod of a subreddit you never visit might be offended at your comment and complain to the admins, it's just a way to stifle speech.

It's basically GamerGate expanding into social media.

Re: We apologize

#174

Post by killface »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #2

They are trying to reframe the discussion around the idea that they failed in communicating. What they failed in, actually, was keeping an astounding and dedicated employee their users loved.

The AMA-specific portions were not (originally) the primary complaints. The mods reframed the discussion into "AMA liaison and mod tools" but it was about so much more than that. The admins would make certain users mods of subreddits, who then un-modded everybody else and basically took it over. The rampant censorship of non-mainstream opinions (even if you vehemently disagree with them), articles about Pao's shady business dealings being deleted, articles about the Ponzi scheme Pao's husband is involved in being deleted, articles about Pao's sleeping with married men (while married herself) to get ahead in her career, her trivial and frivolous "gender discrimination" lawsuit, the massive use of shadowbanning in the last couple years that is inconsistently applied, and the list can go on forever.

Basically reddit was a cesspool of villainy for a while, and now she's turning it into a cesspool of SJW/"Mod-approved language". I'll take the former any day of the week. When you're afraid to speak your mind because you might get shadowbanned or a mod of a subreddit you never visit might be offended at your comment and complain to the admins, it's just a way to stifle speech.

It's basically GamerGate expanding into social media.

Re: We apologize

#175

Post by mybloop »

pbreit wrote: post #51
emehrkay wrote: post #10

I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to dislike her. They have no real reason to be mad at the one woman being fired. They're just coming off as a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the wo…

She's not very likable. You don't see down voting like this for Alexis, Yishan or, elsewhere, PG and SamA. She still speaks more in MBA-ease like "providing tools" and "listening to users" and "communicated poorly", etc. And the person fired was by most accounts a well-liked, very visible, performing employee. Dismissing someone like that with very little care was horrific management. Edit: I don't know why I include…

> Alexis

Male.

> Yishan

Male.

> PG

Male.

> SamA

Male.

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Re: We apologize

#176

Post by [deleted] »

emehrkay wrote: post #10

I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to dislike her. They have no real reason to be mad at the one woman being fired. They're just coming off as a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the wo…

[deleted]

Re: We apologize

#177

Post by axlprose »

evan_ wrote: post #146
MisterWebz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of misogynists who are upset that a female employee was fired. Right.

No, you're right- they don't care about that at all. They're mad that the administration are cracking down on abusive subreddits like "fat people hate" and all of the revenge porn subs that got shut down last year. They're pretending to care about the Victoria thing because it's more socially acceptable.

And you know this because you interviewed the hundreds of thousands of discontent reddit users I presume?

Generalizations are fun, but they don't make the greatest arguments.

Not all users that were upset at the /r/fatpeoplehate ban were subscribers to that sub, and not all subscribers to that sub were partaking in harassment I presume (which is a reasonable assessment based on the subscriber numbers and the usual ratios of participation in online communities).

So taking all that into account, even if this is in fact the main demographic of disgruntled users, that still has nothing to do with misogyny. If it were true misogyny, they likely wouldn't even be using a female employee as their martyr. I really don't understand what distorting contexts and stretching the truth to frame things in terms of sexism is supposed to accomplish, but it's certainly not proving any points.

Reddit screwed up, and it's CEO's decisions clearly affected an influential and vocal part of the community, to the point where it's now open to competition from sites like voat. There's enough business mishaps and silliness in all this to explain everything, I don't see how shoehorning misogyny into it adds anything of value.

Re: We apologize

#178

Post by revelation »

rdtsc wrote: post #11

That was actually a decent apology not the typical corporate "We are sorry you feel this way non-apology apology". Yeah it came late. But better late than never.

It reads like full-bore PR nonsense to me.

Re: We apologize

#179

Post by cthalupa »

SerpentJoe wrote: post #81
Raphmedia wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I have been a moderator on a website of slightly less than a million registered users from 2003 to 2008 so I have my heart on the moderator's side. The moderators of Reddit actually have very legitimate issues and are bringing points that need to be addressed. Moderators of websites as big as reddit should be managed correctly and supervised. They should also have a line on communication with the administ…

There are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about how Reddit empowers the volunteer work of moderators, but that is the least of the complaints that are clogging the site right now. There are three major objections being raised loudly and repeatedly: 1) Moderators, who provide a huge portion of the value of the site, are treated with disrespect by the organization. 2) An employee whose availability was usefu…

> A small number of users is upset at her stance in favor of diversity and against sexism

Uh. What?

First of all, Ellen Pao's stances against sexism and pro diversity are suspect. She used them as a reason as to why she was fired, and sued her former employer. She lost. Miserably.

Her husband is also an allged ponzi scheme fraudster.

Whatever Ellen Pao may deserve, sympathy is not it.

Re: We apologize

#180

Post by scrapcode »

mybloop wrote: post #175
pbreit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's not very likable. You don't see down voting like this for Alexis, Yishan or, elsewhere, PG and SamA. She still speaks more in MBA-ease like "providing tools" and "listening to users" and "communicated poorly", etc. And the person fired was by most accounts a well-liked, very visible, performing employee. Dismissing someone like that with very little care was horrific management. Edit: I don't know why I include…

> Alexis Male. > Yishan Male. > PG Male. > SamA Male. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to see a pattern here.

This level of backlash being related to sexual orientation is a ridiculous claim. You should be ashamed. It's unfounded comments like yours that builds opposing communities against real issues.
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