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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

#551

Post by chinpokomon »

ryanlol wrote: post #278
sbilstein wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I'm so disappointed that Reddit's management allowed such a crappy culture to evolve in their forums for so long. I remember signing on in 2010 and just feeling really uncomfortable browsing any of the major subreddits. Why did it take so long to deal with characters like violentacrez?

Why should the reddit administration interfere with communities ran by third parties? IRC networks are still running just fine with minimal intervention.

Or for that matter newsgroups. I guess since newsgroups are subscribed by the carrier, IRC might still be the better example.

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

#552

Post by jarfil »

dmfdmf wrote: post #520
WalterBright wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Freedom of speech != freedom to force anyone to listen to you.

As long as you are free to create your own community where you can say whatever you want, there is no need for any other community to listen to you.

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

#553

Post by mcphage »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #295
mcphage wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you're in my house, I'm going to hold you to a much higher standard than "not blatantly illegal". If you resent Reddit doing the same, well, the Internet isn't lacking for dank underbellies.

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

#554

Post by imaginenore »

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…

So what if some sub is offensive? Should it be banned?

Your opinion is offensive to me, yet I don't want to silence you, because freedom of speech is more important than people getting offended.

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

#555

Post by hiou »

sama wrote: post #256
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #32

“Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said. What exactly "phenomenal" has she done? Reddit works pretty much the same as it worked several years ago, but in the meantime she managed to piss off the majority of community, which is the only reason Reddit exists

She walked in to a hot mess of a situation after the previous CEO resigned on the spot and kept the company from falling apart (which I thought was a live concern at the time). You try doing that some day.

I imagine it's a lot easier to just have the cash and power to swap out those who threw their hearts out on the line. Big pictures obscure the small pictures of the lives caught in the meat grinder of the march of capital.

Becoming a VC has become the new beginning of the end for any humanity left in a human being.

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

#557

Post by brighteyes »

nabeelahmed13 wrote: post #198
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…

No one is "reducing" anything. Altman is not justifying the arbitrary bans (or any Reddit admin shenanigans) here, that is not the topic of this sentence. He is talking strictly about one dangerous activity that gets offenders banned: death threats, which Ellen Pao (the human at the other end) received. We don't know why Pao went out. We can suspect it was the backlash (more likely), or disagreements with the board […

> We don't know why Pao went out.

Why don't you believe her when she says it was a disagreement with the board over the future of reddit?

"We don't know" when the person in question is saying "this is why" is not very respectful.

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

#558

Post by pavel_lishin »

mindslight wrote: post #157
pavel_lishin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will reddit lessen their censorship efforts? I doubt it. Garbage like FPH should have been dealt with much sooner. The reason there was a backlash about that at all, imo, is because they let it drag out too long. Reddit was the friend-parent for so long that when it finally came time to enforce some discipline, it came as a shock and felt like a betrayal.

Erm, why should there be any "discipline" at all? Discussion sites (HN included) exist solely due to their users' laziness for using and/or creating better Free decentralized solutions and ensuing network effects. In exchange for this ease of use, the site inserts an epsilon of advertising and censorship. This is the extent of their value proposition. Eventually business/legal skinjobs take over, mistake the communit…

> Erm, why should there be any "discipline" at all?

Because communities need moderators. A free for all is anarchy; enough shitbags will ruin any particular community. I've moderated a small forum, and that was a headache when I just had two trolls to deal with, and I still failed at it - people left because of those two people, enough of them that the forum is basically dead now.

On a more cynical/business perspective, if enough users leave and if enough negative press is printed, your business loses money.

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

#559

Post by enraged_camel »

ceejayoz wrote: post #407
alayne wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than 200k signed, so you're off by a factor of 10. I think that's too many to dismiss it as a vocal minority. I think a lot of things were incorrectly attributed to Pao. It doesn't really matter though. I don't think she was ever going to get back the community's confidence.

> More than 200k signed, so you're off by a factor of 10. So half a percent of the userbase or so? I'd call that a vocal minority. http://www.redditblog.com/2015/06/happy-10th-birthday-to-us-... > I don't think she was ever going to get back the community's confidence. Likely true. Backing down here likely means zero chance of addressing toxic communities in the site for the foreseeable future.

>>So half a percent of the userbase or so? I'd call that a vocal minority.

By that logic, the people who protested during the Civil Rights movement were also a vocal minority. Doesn't make their grievances any less valid.

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

#560

Post by mirimir »

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…

Redit isn't a community. It's a bunch of communities. Most of them, I more or less dislike, for various overlapping sets of reasons. But I support freedom of speech. Everyone is free to ignore whatever they dislike.

Also, in such communities, strong anonymity is prudent. It does protect griefers from consequences, I admit. But more importantly, it protects all users from meatspace risks.

Edit: This is an old discussion. Especially if one replaces "Redit" with "Usenet".

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