Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin • Hacker News Board

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#531

Post by fit2rule » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 12:52 PM UTC

pervycreeper wrote: post #504

fit2rule wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've seen this happen time and time again : USENET, Compuserve, to some degree .. AOL .. slashdot .. kuro5hin .. etc. etc. Those who fail to study their Internet history are doomed to repeat it, it seems. I've never been content with the centralized nature of Reddit as an Internet forum - for me this moment of truth has been bound to occur.

>We've seen this happen time and time again : USENET, Compuserve, to some degree .. AOL .. slashdot .. kuro5hin What exactly is the same about what happened to those forums? All I can think of is that they declined in popularity, but maybe I'm missing some history.

These realms all started off as great communities with people who were mostly in it to participate and contribute to the discussion. But over time the zeitgeist became cool, and as soon as that happens, the bean-counters arrive.

And once that happens, it is pretty much game over for the community, no matter what technology is being used to sustain it.

Fundamentally there isn't much difference between your reddits and slashdots and USENETS .. and HN's .. in the end, the community is only as valuable as it perceives itself to have value. And then when the value becomes something that is co-opted by others who desire to exploit that value, a self-awareness of that value by the collective becomes its own worst fault. Reddit is clearly being invalidated by people who don't want the value they create to be valued differently by people who have what they consider to be differing values.

So it goes. I hope the next forum where people can creatively contribute to the dialog is not centralized. But that's hard - you have to have somewhere to meet, after all ..

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#532

Post by zamalek » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 12:58 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #347

Malician wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're trying to make a sarcastic point here (unless I'm mistaken,) but that's probably quite true as written. Even /r/askscience supports this move [1]. It is one of the most heavily moderated subreddits on the site, with professional staff. These aren't rabblerousers, they are very hard-working volunteers who are fed up with the administration. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3by2nk/a_messa…

The comment I replied to was trying to say that this isn't about the firing, and is about the process of limiting free speech and restricting subs in a non-transparent manner. I see none of that in the /r/askscience post. It seems to me that there are two major, unrelated tensions in Reddit at the moment: 1. Certain people want Reddit to be a haven for free speech, including speech that coordinates abusive actions. T…

> Certain people want Reddit to be a haven for free speech, including speech that coordinates abusive actions

That's a contradiction, not many people (especially internet people) understand that freedom of speech and freedom of expression do not cover a conspiracy to be harmful.

However, Reddit certainly doesn't have [correctly defined] freedom of speech - which I have a problem with: Reddit has a certain sway over the way that people think and a world where unpopular or culturally immoral opinions are muzzled is not a world where ethical progress can be made.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#533

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:06 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #491

redthrowaway wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tension 2 is organizational debt that Ellen Pao clearly inherited, and while the buck now stops with her to fix it, nobody thinks it's a problem of her making. You don't have to think it's a problem of her making to think that she is singularly incapable of solving it. This is, after all, a person so far removed from the reddit community that she posted a link to her own inbox.[0] kn0thing is, for all his original t…

> You don't have to think it's a problem of her making to think that she is singularly incapable of solving it. This is, after all, a person so far removed from the reddit community that she posted a link to her own inbox.[0] I think she's singularly incapable of solving it, but that's fine. I don't think it's reasonable to expect her to be. She should be running a company and building a team that can solve it. Yes,…

What was that about CEOs being responsible for building culture?

Pao may or may not be an idiot in the same league as Fiorina, Apotheker, and - arguably - Whitman and Ballmer.

But I think the Reddit flareup is part of a more general disgust with emotionally damaged management culture which is devoted to profits before people, but is so bad at people that profits tank too.

There's a point beyond which being rich and powerful doesn't protect you from shooting off your own head. Reddit management seems to have crossed that line, and the content farm idea stops working when contributors stop feeling like they're a part of a community and realise they're really just unpaid employees on a profit production line.

So it's not just about the AMA editor. It's about the fact that management is trying to control a community it doesn't pay and doesn't really own. The "Do what you like, but give us clicks" deal has been changed to "We run this farm, we tell you what you can and can't post, but give us clicks anyway, because $business$ - oh and by the way, fuck you."

The prospects for the future are not good, IMO.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#534

Post by timdiggerm » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

bgilroy26 wrote: post #355

HappyTypist wrote: post #289

Marc Bodnick commented on why Victoria was fired: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png I consider him to be a reputable source and the claims are very plausible. Out of touch management never know how out of touch they are.

This s the best information we have so far, but it's confusing. There have been a bunch of video IAMAs before

They were never very good though?

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#535

Post by revelation » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

unfunco wrote: post #360

I'm really not trying to troll here. Reddit started going badly downhill (where it was a visible and public departure from what it was previously) from around the time that Sam Altman personally invested in the company nine months ago, an announcement that almost ruptured my cringe-pipes. I laughed internally at the notion that he thinks he's altruistic by giving 10% back to the users, whilst in the same announcement…

It's like Reddit is this persistent YC nightmare that he feels he needs to "right the history" on it and somehow make it successful.

And they're just massively failing at every step. Out of touch, out of clue. Reddit the company is at this point completely removed from the actual site. They went back into startup mode but you would never know it looking at the site. No new features, same old shitty reliability, nothing.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#536

Post by BgSpnnrs » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:09 PM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #450

beedogs wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, before they started hellbanning all of those subreddits (TrayvonMartin, fatpeoplehate, etc.) I had no idea they even existed. For 8 years I've been blissfully unaware of all the garbage subreddits popping up.

Well then consider yourself lucky that your favourite subreddits weren't targets. I spend way too much time on reddit and I have had to retreat from a few subreddits because of the FPH brigaders (using RES to tag them so I could see when a wave of them hit a sub). I was close to losing all hope just before they banned it. It would not have surprised me to see Conde Nast pull the plug on reddit before the end of 2015…

If you tag a user of a subreddit then you are going to see them pop up all over the place. It's not necessarily indicative of a raid or brigade.

>also, there were 150,000 of them.

Probably explains why you saw tagged users 'invading' subs you use.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#537

Post by jpindar » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:12 PM UTC

thought_alarm wrote: post #87

Quickly! Everybody back to Usenet!

Sssshhh!

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#538

Post by orbitur » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:16 PM UTC

eclipxe wrote: post #181

nols wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spare us, Reddit's been mismanaged for long before Ms Pao started there. Just look at Alexis Ohanian's (kn0thing) comments[0]. Not to mention the celeb nudes debacle, which was allowed then disallowed and announced by a sysadmin [1]. And the then CEO Yishan Wong publicly fighting with a former employee [2]. Then we can go way back to /r/jailbait and the Violentacrez affair, the only mod to be awarded a golden trophy…

The tide changed with Pao. All of those were roadblocks, but never had the community turned so swiftly against the admins until Pao arrived. There's an entire subreddit dedicated to denigrating Pao. kn0thing has had missteps but generally has had the respect of the community. The community largely does not respect Pao.

> The community largely does not respect Pao

Any criticism I've read seems to be based around how she's a woman and she used her womanness to get ahead.

Nothing she has done as the CEO of Reddit is evidence of the need for the awful insults and copypasta I've seen lobbed at her. And these aren't hidden in the recesses of MRA subreddits, they're the top comments on any thread with any mention of Pao.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#539

Post by sudioStudio64 » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:16 PM UTC

The intense vitriol about Ellen Pao makes me very suspicious of most complaints from vocal redditors.

I'm not even really sure why the anti-fem crowd hates her so much. But man...wow.

If some of the things that I've read today are to be believed, the firing of this admin was a stupid act. Reddit and several other "web 2.0" companies made it big on "user generated content" which always seemed like it had the potential to turn into a gross corporate overlord milking their user-cow for all it's worth.

It seems like there are a lot of valley companies that just want to slap a sticker on your culture and hand it back to you. Or they want to say that the rules don't apply to them because they are so new and communicate with their employees through an app or some other horse shit.

In the end, it sounds like this young woman (the admin they fired) did her job well and it sucks when people aren't rewarded for that.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#540

Post by orbitur » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 1:21 PM UTC

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #539

The intense vitriol about Ellen Pao makes me very suspicious of most complaints from vocal redditors. I'm not even really sure why the anti-fem crowd hates her so much. But man...wow. If some of the things that I've read today are to be believed, the firing of this admin was a stupid act. Reddit and several other "web 2.0" companies made it big on "user generated content" which always seemed like it had the potential…

A large subset of vocal redditors hated Pao the moment she walked through the door. Now everything that happens on her watch is considered evidence of her awfulness.

Goes to show you just how powerful the MRA subreddits are. I used to be staunchly "free speech above all", but seeing how blind hatred can fester and spread has filled me with a lot of doubts about us, as a group of humans.