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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

#391

Post by cafard »

axlprose wrote: post #331
eli wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to explain it in a few sentences for those of us who are confused but don't wish to read a book?

Basically, the nature of the internet and how it enables individuals to have much louder voices, has significant implications for the integrity and expectations of what we used to consider "news". The point being that the old idea of 'news' as many of us are used to, as being something that's even semi reliable, needs some serious rethinking, because 'news' undergoes significantly less curation now that outlets are c…

It has democratized the distribution of information or opinion. In the old days, as A.J. Liebling said, "The freedom of the press applies mainly to the man who owns one." (Quoted from memory, so probably a bit wrong.) Those men, and the occasional woman, were a very mixed lot.

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

#392

Post by cafard »

axlprose wrote: post #331
eli wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to explain it in a few sentences for those of us who are confused but don't wish to read a book?

Basically, the nature of the internet and how it enables individuals to have much louder voices, has significant implications for the integrity and expectations of what we used to consider "news". The point being that the old idea of 'news' as many of us are used to, as being something that's even semi reliable, needs some serious rethinking, because 'news' undergoes significantly less curation now that outlets are c…

It has democratized the distribution of information or opinion. In the old days, as A.J. Liebling said, "The freedom of the press applies mainly to the man who owns one." (Quoted from memory, so probably a bit wrong.) Those men, and the occasional woman, were a very mixed lot.

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

#393

Post by knowaveragejoe »

MBCook wrote: post #237
lingben wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at least she tried to stand up against some of the worst of Reddit. I'm baffled at how people misunderstand Ellen's actions in shutting down a few subreddits randomly. She did not 'clean' reddit of the worst of reddit nor 'hate' subreddits. In fact, there are still dozens and dozens of really disgusting stuff on reddit like /r/gasthekikes and /r/coontown Let's please stop this false narrative that she was a cha…

Let's make three categories of things on Reddit. One is innocuous (or relatively so) like /r/knitting or even /r/politics or /r/atheism. Perhaps there are big arguments but in the grand scheme of things it's not bad. Type two is /r/coontown or other hate subs. They're clearly offensive. I wouldn't let them on my site if I ran it, but they exist. The key here is they stay mostly to themselves. I wasn't aware of them b…

By no means do they stay to themselves, however. Pick a news issue involving race in the vaguest sense and they're there in the comments, promoting their diversity-apocalypse conspiracy theory. If the membership numbers are to be believed, it's swindling some people(some of whom perhaps had pre-existing beliefs, sure).

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

#394

Post by evolve2k »

pvg wrote: post #129
davmre wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (deleted) Quora post is the best explanation I've seen thus far: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--N83GXLMb...

Which was explicitly denied by reddit and is no different than any other piece of baseless speculation.

But it does seem to fit the corporate 'need to monetize' narrative quite well.

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

#395

Post by [deleted] »

MBCook wrote: post #237
lingben wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at least she tried to stand up against some of the worst of Reddit. I'm baffled at how people misunderstand Ellen's actions in shutting down a few subreddits randomly. She did not 'clean' reddit of the worst of reddit nor 'hate' subreddits. In fact, there are still dozens and dozens of really disgusting stuff on reddit like /r/gasthekikes and /r/coontown Let's please stop this false narrative that she was a cha…

Let's make three categories of things on Reddit. One is innocuous (or relatively so) like /r/knitting or even /r/politics or /r/atheism. Perhaps there are big arguments but in the grand scheme of things it's not bad. Type two is /r/coontown or other hate subs. They're clearly offensive. I wouldn't let them on my site if I ran it, but they exist. The key here is they stay mostly to themselves. I wasn't aware of them b…

[deleted]

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

#396

Post by Retra »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #357
tedunangst wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protip: it's their, not there.

Protip: If you have to resort to attacking someones grammar when you're out of counter arguments it means you lost the debate.

If that isn't a pointlessly antagonistic thing to say, I don't know what is.

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

#397

Post by axlprose »

dasil003 wrote: post #367
axlprose wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even follow the original parent's argument? He didn't just bring up "clickbait media" as a non-sequitur while defending reddit comments. He highlighted how everything in this whole mess so far can be explained through the lens of questionable media, and literally none of his analysis+critique has been addressed so far, all that's been done is point out how he sounded like some angry mob person. Please explain…

Saying that online activists are equally to blame as misogynists and racists for the devolution of civil dialog online is sort of like insisting on creationism getting equal media coverage to evolution on the basis of fairness.

One person's "freedom fighter" is another person's "terrorist". For matters like these, it's better if we stick to the few objective observations we can make, such as deconstructing how arguments are made, and when/where they're propagated, which is exactly what the original comment tried to do.

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

#398

Post by meatysnapper »

justizin wrote: post #118
ElComradio wrote: post #100

PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted. We cannot trust Altman is being honest that he appreciated her efforts. We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. All of this that comes out of spokesmen is carefully crafted as a result of a numbers game. When do we hear "so and so CEO did a horrible job and was forced out by the board."? Never. So are we to believe there is no such thing as a terrible…

> Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman. It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman, since a lot of the vitriol predates the past few days.

The problem with insults in America is that people confuse sexism for insults that are gender-specific. Unlike anal sex, many insults do not work on any gender.

Many of the insults we men use on each other just don't work on a woman. For example, what would calling a woman a "dickless wonder" even mean?

Similarly, let's say I wanted to insult a guy raised by a gay male couple. It would make no sense telling him "Your mother is a whore".

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

#399

Post by oldmanjay »

geofft wrote: post #355
scrollaway wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, there were two unpopular firings last month at reddit. The Reddit Gifts guy, who was let go without much fanfare, and chooter (Victoria), who got the entire website to support her, go dark in protest, and fast-forwarded Pao's resignation. But we don't mention those, no no. It's only "sexism" and "mysoginy" because we don't like what happened to a woman . When it's good for a woman, that's just shee…

I agree that, from the public information, it sounds like both of those terminations were potentially ill-advised. (There's also rumors that both of them were loosely tied to Yishan's everyone-in-SF policy, as it happens, but only rumors.) Obviously there's more going on than the public will ever know, unless Reddit corporate email ends up on Wikileaks, so I don't actually have an opinion on them because I don't have…

There's something offputting about referring to people by their reddit usernames as if that's an important facet to their personhood. It makes me think, perhaps without justification, that you have your identity far too tied up in a silly website.
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