Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by chazu » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:13 AM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #412

pavel_lishin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddits problem is they said anything goes, and then years later they saw what they created Isn't that basically what I said? > Where is the limit? Coontown, does that get banned? Sexwithdogs? Incest? SRS? I genuinely do not know, but they need to find that limit, they need to be transparent about how they came to that decision, and they need to be consistent and fair about applying it to subreddits. Like I said ab…

Banning a number of subreddits that you can count with the fingers on one hand, and zero users, is swinging the hammer down hard? What would be a light touch, then?

FWIW tons of users have been shadowbanned for relatively light infringements (posting about TPP on /r/news, posting negative news items about Pao on various subreddits) since the 5 sub-reddits were shut down.

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

#542

Post by aiiane » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:13 AM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #487

mcphage wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, because it leads to an incoherent policy. Reddit's original policy, for better or for worse, was "anything that isn't illegal." They had to add one or two things to that over the years but they stuck to that. Reddit's policy then became, unofficially, "trust us to get rid of the crap." That sounds fine, but it has problems: 1. it's not the original policy. HN has a "trust us" policy and it works great but it's al…

Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good isn't great either.

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

#543

Post by AnkhMorporkian » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:14 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #537

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's more to it. Because I don't want to drag her personal life into it (which does play a role), there were the huge problems with the AMA app, the new privacy policy (which while I agreed with, many didnt), Reddit Notes (the reddit cryptocurrency; perhaps the most jaw-droppingly stupid move in her tenure), and really, many more things.

That's it ? You must be detached from reality and what a CEO does if you think those deserve being fired for. And seriously even insinuating that her personal life has anything to do with this is frankly disgusting behaviour.

How is it frankly disgusting behavior?

Let me ask you about Brendan Eich, previously CEO of Mozilla. He contributed money to anti-prop 8 causes in California. He was fired from Mozilla because he supported anti-gay marriage causes. Was it wrong of mozilla to fire him because of his support?

If you say it was wrong, I will respect that we have different views on this issue.

If you think it's OK to fire Eich but not even bring up Pao's personal life, I will call you a hypocrite.

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

#544

Post by vacri » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:15 AM UTC

axlprose wrote: post #521

vacri wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you feel up to it, please do so. Uh, I just did. Reductio Ad Hitlerum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum Overstating the case to extremes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man My point is that you're being a hypocrite, demanding someone else not discourage critical thinking, while exhibiting logical fallacies yourself. Shaming someone about 'discouraging critical thinking' through the use…

Critical thinking just involves analysis of arguments presented. If my arguments were fallacious, then I apologize, but you haven't exactly clarified how exactly I exaggerated the OP's claims, as opposed to just summarized them. I'll accept the godwin's law card, that was a slip. Secondly, I did notice your analysis, but I was referring to the general "you", so that others can feel free to chime in and critique as we…

"this reminds me of gamergate" => "questioning ethics in any journalism anywhere"

It's a fairly stock form of strawman, taking someone's opinion and extrapolating it to the extreme. There are qualitative parallels between this event and gamergate, and the GP was mentioning them. I thought the same as the GP. But questioning ethics in any journalism anywhere? Seriously? For example, people question the ethics of Rupert Murdoch's empire and those of the UK tabloid culture, yet that public questioning is not reminiscent at all of gamergate.

I certainly don't see Murdoch getting numerous vitriolic rape threats because of his questionable journalistic ethics.

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

#545

Post by vehementi » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:16 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #369

MBCook wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 did she clear up Reddit. But at least I saw she tried to do something, dipping her toe into the battle. And I'm worried I'll be back sliding on that. The main problem I think most people had with it wasn't that there was action taken. It's that it was arbitrary, there were no guidelines given, and there was no consistency. If there had been a set of community guidelines published, a week given for moder…

> The main problem I think most people had with it wasn't that there was action taken. It's that it was arbitrary, there were no guidelines given, and there was no consistency.

There were all of these things. There just wasn't completeness - i.e. they didn't (yet?) ban every sub that was in "category 3" harassing people IRL. It was not arbitrary: those ones were actively harassing people. There were guidelines: they existed before, and she posted them in response. There was no inconsistency: subreddits failing to meet these criteria were not banned under this policy. 100% of people upset on these grounds are in the wrong.

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

#546

Post by bruceb » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:17 AM UTC

justizin wrote: post #137

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS You mean this? > [1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned. All that opposition - strong enough to convince "Chairman Pao" to resign - reduced to death threats? All those arbitrary bans written off as a just punishment for criminal behavi…

Calling her "Chairman Pao" is racist, but moreso, reductive.

yes only those of Chinese decent are compared to Mao.

https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0SO8xk4b...

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

#547

Post by geofft » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:17 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #377

geofft wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

GP's example was that two reddit employees, in two similar situations, got treated differently. They had a different gender, and the woman was treated exponentially worse. My example was that two reddit employees, in two similar situations, got treated differently. Thad a different gender, and in this case, the woman was treated exponentially better. So my point was that you can play the "let's find the sexist" game.…

Okay, now I understand what you mean, thanks. That did not occur to me at first. I think part of why was that /u/kickme444's departure was not well-publicized until after /u/chooter's, so it seems natural that the response was more muted. But more fundamentally, I'm not looking for sexism for the sake of looking for sexism: I'm looking for plausible causes of why one person was on the receiving end of way more obviously awful behavior than another, and how we can minimize the vitriol that anyone gets. If sexism is a plausible cause, and calling it what it is helps to eliminate it, then let's do that.

Kindness does not cancel out or excuse vitriol. If women get more kindness and also more vitriol online, getting less vitriol to women is still important; I am not concerned about some sum between positive behavior and negative behavior.

Let's say that the Star-Belly Sneetches either get rich beyond their wildest dreams or find themselves starving and begging on the streets. The Plain-Belly Sneetches don't tend to do better than middle class, but they don't do worse, either. To me, there is a single obvious injustice here worth our immediate efforts. If we make sure that Star-Bellied Sneetches have a place to live and food to eat, and if they still get super rich sometimes (i.e., there wasn't an underlying economic problem that advantaged some at the cost of others), then we can look at why that is and why the Plain-Belly Sneetches don't. But worrying about the Plain-Belly Sneetches first is misplaced, and it's clearly not the case that there's some net equality between the two groups because their average wealth is the same.

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

#548

Post by dmfdmf » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

Veedrac wrote: post #540

dmfdmf wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At last, a voice of reason in hundreds of pointless comments. Free speech is a principle and people should be free to say whatever they want no matter how disgusting or distasteful to the majority or mainstream. This is the ideal of a free society and people who can't make the distinction between supporting the principle and yet rejecting the advocates of idiocy are implicitly advocating some form of government censo…

If your version of free speech means allowing anything to be said anywhere, I don't want it. The principle of free speech I subscribe to is allowing anyone a place such that those who want to listen, can. In essence, to prevent one party silencing a communication between two other parties. Reddit need not be that place.

Can you elaborate? Its not clear to me where we disagree, if at all.

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

#549

Post by tzs » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:20 AM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #88

devindotcom wrote: post #38

Maybe I missed it, but was there ever any information on why Victoria was fired, or whether Pao actually had anything (or everything) to do with it? From where I was sitting, it seemed like no one actually learned the full story, which might be confidential or take time to contextualize/safely explain, and everyone immediately threw it on Pao's lap and downvoted any holding maneuvers she and the rest of the staff tri…

It was not made public why Victoria was fired. Neither of the parties are talking about it, so generally it's unknown. The /r/iama mods were not upset that she was fired. They were upset that there was no transition plan in place. > it seems like there was a lot of finger pointing before anyone knew what was actually happening There was finger pointing because nobody knew what was happening. Functions that Victoria w…

> The /r/iama mods were not upset that she was fired. They were upset that there was no transition plan in place.

From what I saw it was both. They shut down over the latter because it left them unable to manage things to their satisfaction, but they seemed to genuinely like her and wanted her to keep her position.

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

#550

Post by mcphage » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #487

mcphage wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, because it leads to an incoherent policy. Reddit's original policy, for better or for worse, was "anything that isn't illegal." They had to add one or two things to that over the years but they stuck to that. Reddit's policy then became, unofficially, "trust us to get rid of the crap." That sounds fine, but it has problems: 1. it's not the original policy. HN has a "trust us" policy and it works great but it's al…

I agree that they're changing their policy, and that it has been—and always was going to be—a painful process. But the failures of their original policy get splashed across the Internet every few months. So they can either stick their head in the sand, pretend it's not the problem it always has been, and watch their community get turned into the world's largest bastion of hate speech, or they can fix their mistakes and clean house. Are they doing a good job? Not particularly. I don't think they really know how. But they'll figure it out eventually. Hopefully meanwhile not fucking everything else up, too.