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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

#291

Post by geofft »

DennisP wrote: post #59
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.

It depends on the subreddits. With my subscriptions I barely noticed the whole thing.

As I mentioned last time this was on HN, me three.

I think there's an interesting cultural weirdness about Reddit here. Part of the problem with brigading is that if you link to another post in another subreddit, you're already logged in and have exactly as much power to upvote and downvote and comment as you did on the subreddit where you came from. There's the entire "no participation" community-by-obscurity trick, where subreddit CSS hides voting links if the hostname is np.reddit.com (this is supposed to be used for translations into the hypothetical "NP" ISO-631 language), but the fact that it's a CSS trick points to underlying discontent.

On the other hand, Reddit is a great platform for small communities precisely because you're already logged in. I've never created a Lambda the Ultimate account and only think about it maybe once every six months, but I'm subbed to /r/types, so anything that flies by gets onto my Reddit home page.

I'm not sure how to reconcile these two problems. A client-side aggregator would solve the issue of visiting each independent site, but the shared login mechanism is also crucial, and is both a blessing and a curse.

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

#292

Post by Nadya »

buckbova wrote: post #130
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…

> The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people even if there is Internet between you. That is humanity. People are narcissistic assholes. If the average person wasn't scared of what would happen or how they're perceived they'd punch you right in the face for looking in their direction. That's what internet anonymity does. Brings out…

Mother Teresa was a rather terrible person. She saw human suffering as a way to be closer to God and squirreled donations to her clinics away for personal bank accounts of her and her higher-class/political goons. She defended some rather evil characters and even kept a $1.25 million dollars donated to her from stolen money. When asked to return it, she simply ignored the request.

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

#293

Post by golergka »

kolbe wrote: post #106
minimaxir wrote: post #36

Ellen Pao gives the reason for leaving on /r/self: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_tha... > So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles. This is believable because there have been odd business decisions under her watch, not just policy decisions. RedditMade,…

Reading between the lines and viewing her resignation in the context of what she's had to go through in the past few months, she was harassed out of the job by the user base.

Part of the user base harassed her. Part of the user base raised valid concerns about her performance as CEO in a reasonable, well-argued manner. Part of the user base did both.

Why do people here (in this HN thread) tend to pretend it's either one or the other? When you're speaking about a big amount of people, pretending like they all behave the same way is never a good representation of a situation.

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

#294

Post by austenallred »

yen223 wrote: post #255
austenallred wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://np.reddit.com/r/FaithInHumanity/comments/39ee4c/char... She tried to share a link to a private message. That's the equivalent of my mom emailing me and saying, "Here's the picture - c:\\user\desktop\pic.jpg" - it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the site works. Then everyone who replied was shadowbanned and every post was deleted. So no, she literally didn't know how to use the site.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_ol... The new CEO doesn't know how to make lists. Is he going to catch shit for it?

He should

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

#295

Post by CamperBob2 »

mcphage wrote: post #274
CamperBob2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? Clearly both should be banned, but banning one is much better than banning neither.

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?

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

#296

Post by eli »

generic_user wrote: post #221

The knife cuts both ways. The clickbait media and various groups are trying to paint the now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again. Over 200,000 people with legitimate concerns sign a petition to have Pao step down yet they still carry on with there charade. People are sick and tired of the media and a small group of militant activists trying…

I don't understand the preoccupation with the "media." It doesn't seem to me like news sites had much to do with this saga.

Is there a mountain of unfair coverage I didn't see? It seems kind of obvious that Reddit is much more "the media" than any clickbait news site. And wasn't the whole point of "blacking out" subreddits to gain media attention?

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

#297

Post by axlprose »

badsock wrote: post #281
magicalist wrote: post #249

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. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts. Oh please. You can disclaim the disgusting statements made all over reddit recently as not part of a coherent community or whatever, but don't pretend they didn't exist a…

Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but those last two lines read to me like a callout to #gamergate's "It's about ethics in journalism" BS.

So questioning ethics in any kind of journalism anywhere is automatically BS now because of some random highly-opinionated internet drama? Way to discourage critical thinking. Orwell and Huxley would be proud.

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

#298

Post by WalterBright »

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.

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.

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

#299

Post by jerf »

azernik wrote: post #238
jerf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"With the exception of a few niche subreddits and the (few) incredibly moderated major subreddit's" Sometimes I don't recognize what y'all are talking about, and I almost want to defend reddit, then I remember: I've long since adjusted my reddit to be virtually nothing but niche. My largest is ~320,000, but it's just a "Deals" reddit. I've got two at 150,000, both very focused. And it goes down from there. I'd hardly…

What's wrong with Reddit is that politics.vitriol.hate.anger has a very large presence in the default subreddits.

I strongly believe causality runs the other way... becoming a default reddit puts you into an Eternal September that no community could possibly survive.

But in the end, the result is the same.

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

#300

Post by scrollaway »

badsock wrote: post #281
magicalist wrote: post #249

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. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts. Oh please. You can disclaim the disgusting statements made all over reddit recently as not part of a coherent community or whatever, but don't pretend they didn't exist a…

Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but those last two lines read to me like a callout to #gamergate's "It's about ethics in journalism" BS.

So now we're dropping random controversies in the middle of discussions to try make a point? This post is really attracting the worst in people.
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