Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#51

Post by tasty_freeze » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

s9w wrote: post #4

I really don't know what they want anymore. How much cleaner than Reddit does it get? There is nothing left that is even remotely controversial. I'm so confused. The way he said BLACK candidate also feels really weird. We get it - you want to virtue signal. Make it a little less obvious.

The man is married to a black woman and has a biracial child with her who will be seen as black by and large. It is a personal issue to him.

But even if it wasn't a personal issue to him, I'm more disturbed by the number of people who 100% fail to engage with an issue and dismiss it as virtue signalling, as if a person couldn't authentically care about the issue.

Yes, Ohanian is a rich guy, but by stepping away from his role at reddit, it is foregoing likely future income. He is going to spend time working on these issues. Why is that so easy to dismiss?

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#52

Post by s9w » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #13

s9w wrote: post #4

I really don't know what they want anymore. How much cleaner than Reddit does it get? There is nothing left that is even remotely controversial. I'm so confused. The way he said BLACK candidate also feels really weird. We get it - you want to virtue signal. Make it a little less obvious.

lead-ish mod /r/relationship_advice here nope. The horrors we ban for are usually considered (by their submitters) to be perfectly normal, and we often have people starting debates with us about our own rules because other subreddits permit passive bigotry across race, gender, orientation, etc. There's a lot. You've just closed your eyes to it. We've had mods quit because of the volume of crap.

r/relationship_advice is quite infamous for its extreme stance.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#53

Post by ralusek » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

beefalo wrote: post #37

ralusek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is responsible for the fact that 24% of people killed by police are black?

Depending on how many police officers are subscribers in the_donald, possibly.

Did you know that 96% of people killed by police are male? I wonder which forum they went on to make them hate men so much.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#54

Post by kube-system » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

hart_russell wrote: post #24

minimaxir wrote: post #3

Relevant context: recently, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao called out Reddit for their policies after Reddit did a statement on Black Lives Matter: > I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all da…

But that's why she was ousted: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-steps-dow... Turns out only allowing speech that you deem acceptable makes for a pretty boring internet forum.

This one seems pretty decent.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#55

Post by sevenf0ur » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

logicslave wrote: post #20

Reddit is so manipulated at this point. The front page always has a political agenda, unbelievable what happened to that website.

Yes, I routinely see left leaning political ads on the front page. I really don't see what good could come from Alexis's resignation. The site is already a left leaning echo chamber and most of the controversial subs are quarantined or outright banned. Any new ones that crop up are routinely removed. The most controversial (the_donald) has been effectively shutdown for months and removed from r/all for years. What more is there to do?

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#56

Post by WorkingDead » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

purephase wrote: post #12

minimaxir wrote: post #3

Relevant context: recently, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao called out Reddit for their policies after Reddit did a statement on Black Lives Matter: > I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all da…

Yeah, TD alone was huge in 2016-2017 and was a huge contributor to the dynamic we have in the world today. Ellen is 100% right here and Alex did absolutely nothing to address it. Good on her for publicly calling it out.

Right, the healthy discussions over r/politics is what they should encourage. /s

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#57

Post by alecb » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

logicslave wrote: post #20

Reddit is so manipulated at this point. The front page always has a political agenda, unbelievable what happened to that website.

What "political agenda"? If anything, the original core of the site was very left-leaning or heterodox technophiles that didn't have a home on Slashdot. The political parts of the site are now very much deadlocked in the center-right frame of the Democratic party, pretty far away from what the site once was.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#58

Post by ripsawridge » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #31

whymauri wrote: post #2

> I’m saying this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: “What did you do?” Wow. I think this deserves highlighting. It's powerful and beautiful.

It's also indicative of one aspect the problem, where we largely don't care until we have a personal stake in things. For another example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-21804506 > Influential US Republican Senator Rob Portman has renounced his opposition to gay marriage. The Ohio senator said he began to change his mind in 2011 after his son, Will, revealed he was gay. It's great that people change. It's n…

Our aspirations might be vaunting past what humans are generally capable of. I completely agree with you, but since I see over and over (and over) that only direct relationships engender change, I finally conclude that this is where humanity is at. We can call it a bug if we like, but it doesn't mean we can change it.

It only looks like a bug now because we are insisting on building complex, globalized societal configurations which don't play well with that limitation.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#59

Post by koheripbal » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #3

Relevant context: recently, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao called out Reddit for their policies after Reddit did a statement on Black Lives Matter: > I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all da…

I'm confused. T_D was shut down. The sub was quarantined, then hidden, and finally all the mods were removed and the sub was more-or-less locked.

Does she mean that it should have been done sooner?

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#60

Post by JoeSmithson » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #42

purephase wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, TD alone was huge in 2016-2017 and was a huge contributor to the dynamic we have in the world today. Ellen is 100% right here and Alex did absolutely nothing to address it. Good on her for publicly calling it out.

You're giving a message forum way too much credit for Trumpism in the United States. Do you actually think that social media is representative of a majority?

Steve Bannon has spoken about specifically targeting Gamergate for political recruitment, I think the role of Reddit in radicalizing young men is quite important, actually. I don't think you could write a reasonable history of the last 10 years of US politics without reference to Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and 4Chan.