8 ms·

Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a Line? (2015)

37 points by apsec112 10y ago

sloanesturz 10y ago
My favorite part is the section at the bottom that says, > A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 19, 2015, on Page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a Line? I wonder if the Times even modified this Op-Ed between print and web!
- frik 10y ago
  That's some automatically generated text footer, it's common on NYT.
taneq 10y ago
From everything I read about it, Pao was hired (knowingly or not) as a scapegoat. Reddit had started to get a bad rap in the media due to certain sections of the community (eg. /r/fatpeoplehate, various racist subreddits) and had been told by investors that they had to clean up their image. So they hired Pao, had her make the changes (banning a few obnoxious subs, updating site code of conduct), and then fired her (without rolling back the changes) to appease the more vocal members of the community.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  Catering to the lowest common denominator is a large reason why the quality of news networks have tanked in the last decade. Why wouldn't the same drop in quality occur with Reddit?
- spiralx 10y ago
  It's quite common to hire an interim executive to take unpopular but necessary actions and then leave, taking a large chunk of the ill-will with them and clearing the way for the new management to move forward. If you're the sort of person who can handle being the bastard everyone will hate, then it's a great way to make money.
snowwrestler 10y ago
Knowing what we know now, I'd say the sexism angle holds up. Pao was treated viciously during a short tenure during which she didn't do very much. She was blamed for problems that predated her, like mod support and relations, which had been going sour for years. She was blamed for things she didn't do, like firing Victoria (done by Ohanian). She was blamed for relatively mild and obvious moves to prevent abusive content on the site. Steve Huffman was greeted as a savior when he replaced Pao. But he has been far more aggressive in curbing nasty content, and done nasty things himself, like secretly editing other users's posts directly in the database. And yet, he is still CEO. And people don't post nasty and abusive things all day about his looks, his sex life, etc. The Ellen Pao tenure was not the Reddit community's finest hour.
- jordanb 10y ago
  Pao already had a pretty explosive reputation before she took the helm. That reputation certainly stems partially from her being a woman but specifically she was an extremely high profile litigant. Imagine if some other Valley insider with an explosive reputation had been put in charge of reddit at that time and made similar moves. For instance, imagine if they had brought in Kevin Rose. I expect that you'd see a similar pattern of reactions from the community. I've also always had a bit of trouble reconciling the Pao controversy being about sexism with her most controversial move: firing a well-liked female staff member.
  - MegaButts 10y ago
    > I've also always had a bit of trouble reconciling the Pao controversy being about sexism with her most controversial move: firing a well-liked female staff member. OP mentioned that it was not Ellen Pao who fired her, but Alexis Ohanian. This has since been confirmed by Ohanian, so it seems pretty believable.
    - curtis 10y ago
      > ... This has since been confirmed by Ohanian,... Do you have a source for this?
guelo 10y ago
No idea why this is being upvoted here now, but it is a reminder of all the internet culture wars that I think had a big effect on the lead up to Trump's victory. Agree or not it is an amazing revolution. The young male gamer culture won.
- azernik 10y ago
  I absolutely agree - I feel that mainstream outlets ignored this rising phenomenon because they thought gamer culture was "marginal". They didn't cover Gamergate (a yearlong slog) nearly as much as they did its one foray into more "traditional" media culture (harassment of the stars of the Ghostbusters remake). If this had been going on mainly in film, or television, or literary fandom, I think people would have taken it much more seriously as a leading indicator of cultural changes.
  - Shubley 10y ago
    Even more so given that the people involved in Gamergate are young people forming political views that they'll hold for a long time. When a young person develops a view that "the media lie constantly and see you as an enemy if you disagree about any tiny thing", that can bed in and last a long time through someone's life. Once trust is gone like that, how can the media redeem itself with someone? I think this is going to have very long-reaching consequences, decades into the future. There is a growing, persistent constituency of young people who are richly informed by alternative information sources (youtube, online communities, personal experience) whose first exposure to mainstream media is to learn that they're self-indulgent, lying, moralizing bullies. This is still going on today. See the recent saga with PewDiePie being slagged as a neo-nazi. His response video has 12M views, a lot of those are 13-16 year olds learning to never trust the media, especially when they call people racist. It's like when you yourself are involved in something and see it grossly, maliciously misrepresented in media. You lose trust in media that way. Gamergate was basically that happening with thousands of people, because all of them had personal experience with gaming and knew how it actually works.
    - dagenleg 10y ago
impossiblegame 10y ago
This is news again why?
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Without questioning the appropriateness of the story, I would be interested in hearing from OP what prompted the re-posting. HN's front page is as HN's front page does....
  - apsec112 10y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Thanks.
Steeeve 10y ago
Personally, I'm of the opinion that their coverage did cross a line. The coverage of Pao's ouster in general crossed all kinds of lines. We now know that most of the public ill-will towards her was completely unfounded. It's the nature of internet media in general. Everybody wants to be first. Being correct and balanced are nice-to-haves that I'm not sure any media outlet cares about anymore. This goes for online and other media. Even journals target studies with eye catching headlines. This all goes to problems with advertising revenue. Page views and clicks generate revenue almost blindly. End users are engaging not based on trust or value, but based on common themes. It's not sustainable, and if it is sustainable it's not right. The same goes for VC money. I suppose _most_ investment money has been forever broken because they target generic measurable milestones and not quality or long term sustainability which is difficult to truly analyze. I suppose that's why most big silicon valley companies are housed in the shells of former big silicon valley companies. I'm stereotyping here, and yc could very well be much different, but this is definitely an impression that I have. I've never gone after VC money myself, so I could be off base by a long shot.
Steeeve 10y ago
Personally, I'm of the opinion that their coverage did cross a line. The coverage of Pao's ouster in general crossed all kinds of lines. We now know that most of the public ill-will towards her was completely unfounded. It's the nature of internet media in general. Everybody wants to be first. Being correct and balanced are nice-to-haves that I'm not sure any media outlet cares about anymore. This goes for online and other media. Even journals target studies with eye catching headlines. This all goes to problems with advertising revenue. Page views and clicks generate revenue almost blindly. End users are engaging not based on trust or value, but based on common themes. It's not sustainable, and if it is sustainable it's not right. The same goes for VC money. I suppose most investment money has been forever broken because they target generic measurable milestones and not quality or long term sustainability which is difficult to truly analyze. I suppose that's why most big silicon valley companies are housed in the shells of former big silicon valley companies.
apsec112 10y ago
Hey, OP here. I don't really care about Pao, but posted this again because of the details it provides on how the NYT operates in general. In particular, there's this paragraph: "I often hear from readers that they would prefer a straight, neutral treatment — just the facts. But The Times has moved away from that, reflecting editors’ reasonable belief that the basics can be found in many news outlets, every minute of the day. They want to provide “value-added” coverage." If there was a good post analyzing this, with lots of links to primary sources, without getting bogged down in other distractions, I would've posted that instead. But I unfortunately haven't seen one yet.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  Yes, this frank description of NYTimes' journalistic philosophy is vastly more important than the Pao controversy.
arjie 10y ago
There's a community of screaming angry children (not an insult, I mean literal teenagers and younger) who've got some sort of persecution complex and complain often about "censorship". Almost uniformly, the work of these people is not useful to anyone but them. And it is only useful to them in a sort of self gratifying perpetuation of their beliefs coupled with outrage. If you're an individual, I would advise steering clear of these groups. It's not productive to be a member. I think it's today's variant of the BSD v GPL, or Linux v Microsoft flame wars. It's an addictive thing to participate in. You have a team and you strongly present membership and identity. It's less about the principles behind it and more about which principles you can bring to serve your identity as part of the group membership. For an individual, this is a mental trap. You expend a great deal of effort on identification and none on being better. It's not worth it. I think the Ellen Pao thing was one of these identity rites. She was the opposite, and things others could be forgiven for would be heinous crimes if she'd done them.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  An us-vs-them mentality definitely amplified the outrage, but it began for legitimate purposes. Reddit really was a bastion of free speech in its early days, which was fantastic because people with thoughts that didn't align with the PC culture could find a place they liked. The community was afraid the changes implemented by Pao would be a slippery slope to conforming to the mainstream PC culture and reacted accordingly. And looking at how Reddit has changed in the last few years, I would say those fears were not unfounded in the least.

37 points by apsec112 10y ago

My favorite part is the section at the bottom that says, > A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 19, 2015, on Page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a Line? I wonder if the Times even modified this Op-Ed between print and web!

frik 10y ago
That's some automatically generated text footer, it's common on NYT.

taneq 10y ago

From everything I read about it, Pao was hired (knowingly or not) as a scapegoat. Reddit had started to get a bad rap in the media due to certain sections of the community (eg. /r/fatpeoplehate, various racist subreddits) and had been told by investors that they had to clean up their image. So they hired Pao, had her make the changes (banning a few obnoxious subs, updating site code of conduct), and then fired her (without rolling back the changes) to appease the more vocal members of the community.

dukeluke 10y ago
Catering to the lowest common denominator is a large reason why the quality of news networks have tanked in the last decade. Why wouldn't the same drop in quality occur with Reddit?
spiralx 10y ago
It's quite common to hire an interim executive to take unpopular but necessary actions and then leave, taking a large chunk of the ill-will with them and clearing the way for the new management to move forward. If you're the sort of person who can handle being the bastard everyone will hate, then it's a great way to make money.

snowwrestler 10y ago

Knowing what we know now, I'd say the sexism angle holds up. Pao was treated viciously during a short tenure during which she didn't do very much. She was blamed for problems that predated her, like mod support and relations, which had been going sour for years. She was blamed for things she didn't do, like firing Victoria (done by Ohanian). She was blamed for relatively mild and obvious moves to prevent abusive content on the site. Steve Huffman was greeted as a savior when he replaced Pao. But he has been far more aggressive in curbing nasty content, and done nasty things himself, like secretly editing other users's posts directly in the database. And yet, he is still CEO. And people don't post nasty and abusive things all day about his looks, his sex life, etc. The Ellen Pao tenure was not the Reddit community's finest hour.

jordanb 10y ago
Pao already had a pretty explosive reputation before she took the helm. That reputation certainly stems partially from her being a woman but specifically she was an extremely high profile litigant. Imagine if some other Valley insider with an explosive reputation had been put in charge of reddit at that time and made similar moves. For instance, imagine if they had brought in Kevin Rose. I expect that you'd see a similar pattern of reactions from the community. I've also always had a bit of trouble reconciling the Pao controversy being about sexism with her most controversial move: firing a well-liked female staff member.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  > I've also always had a bit of trouble reconciling the Pao controversy being about sexism with her most controversial move: firing a well-liked female staff member. OP mentioned that it was not Ellen Pao who fired her, but Alexis Ohanian. This has since been confirmed by Ohanian, so it seems pretty believable.
  - curtis 10y ago
    > ... This has since been confirmed by Ohanian,... Do you have a source for this?

guelo 10y ago

No idea why this is being upvoted here now, but it is a reminder of all the internet culture wars that I think had a big effect on the lead up to Trump's victory. Agree or not it is an amazing revolution. The young male gamer culture won.

azernik 10y ago
I absolutely agree - I feel that mainstream outlets ignored this rising phenomenon because they thought gamer culture was "marginal". They didn't cover Gamergate (a yearlong slog) nearly as much as they did its one foray into more "traditional" media culture (harassment of the stars of the Ghostbusters remake). If this had been going on mainly in film, or television, or literary fandom, I think people would have taken it much more seriously as a leading indicator of cultural changes.
- Shubley 10y ago
  Even more so given that the people involved in Gamergate are young people forming political views that they'll hold for a long time. When a young person develops a view that "the media lie constantly and see you as an enemy if you disagree about any tiny thing", that can bed in and last a long time through someone's life. Once trust is gone like that, how can the media redeem itself with someone? I think this is going to have very long-reaching consequences, decades into the future. There is a growing, persistent constituency of young people who are richly informed by alternative information sources (youtube, online communities, personal experience) whose first exposure to mainstream media is to learn that they're self-indulgent, lying, moralizing bullies. This is still going on today. See the recent saga with PewDiePie being slagged as a neo-nazi. His response video has 12M views, a lot of those are 13-16 year olds learning to never trust the media, especially when they call people racist. It's like when you yourself are involved in something and see it grossly, maliciously misrepresented in media. You lose trust in media that way. Gamergate was basically that happening with thousands of people, because all of them had personal experience with gaming and knew how it actually works.
  - dagenleg 10y ago

impossiblegame 10y ago

This is news again why?

dredmorbius 10y ago
Without questioning the appropriateness of the story, I would be interested in hearing from OP what prompted the re-posting. HN's front page is as HN's front page does....
- apsec112 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Thanks.

Steeeve 10y ago

Personally, I'm of the opinion that their coverage did cross a line. The coverage of Pao's ouster in general crossed all kinds of lines. We now know that most of the public ill-will towards her was completely unfounded. It's the nature of internet media in general. Everybody wants to be first. Being correct and balanced are nice-to-haves that I'm not sure any media outlet cares about anymore. This goes for online and other media. Even journals target studies with eye catching headlines. This all goes to problems with advertising revenue. Page views and clicks generate revenue almost blindly. End users are engaging not based on trust or value, but based on common themes. It's not sustainable, and if it is sustainable it's not right. The same goes for VC money. I suppose _most_ investment money has been forever broken because they target generic measurable milestones and not quality or long term sustainability which is difficult to truly analyze. I suppose that's why most big silicon valley companies are housed in the shells of former big silicon valley companies. I'm stereotyping here, and yc could very well be much different, but this is definitely an impression that I have. I've never gone after VC money myself, so I could be off base by a long shot.

Steeeve 10y ago

Personally, I'm of the opinion that their coverage did cross a line. The coverage of Pao's ouster in general crossed all kinds of lines. We now know that most of the public ill-will towards her was completely unfounded. It's the nature of internet media in general. Everybody wants to be first. Being correct and balanced are nice-to-haves that I'm not sure any media outlet cares about anymore. This goes for online and other media. Even journals target studies with eye catching headlines. This all goes to problems with advertising revenue. Page views and clicks generate revenue almost blindly. End users are engaging not based on trust or value, but based on common themes. It's not sustainable, and if it is sustainable it's not right. The same goes for VC money. I suppose most investment money has been forever broken because they target generic measurable milestones and not quality or long term sustainability which is difficult to truly analyze. I suppose that's why most big silicon valley companies are housed in the shells of former big silicon valley companies.

apsec112 10y ago

Hey, OP here. I don't really care about Pao, but posted this again because of the details it provides on how the NYT operates in general. In particular, there's this paragraph: "I often hear from readers that they would prefer a straight, neutral treatment — just the facts. But The Times has moved away from that, reflecting editors’ reasonable belief that the basics can be found in many news outlets, every minute of the day. They want to provide “value-added” coverage." If there was a good post analyzing this, with lots of links to primary sources, without getting bogged down in other distractions, I would've posted that instead. But I unfortunately haven't seen one yet.

jessriedel 10y ago
Yes, this frank description of NYTimes' journalistic philosophy is vastly more important than the Pao controversy.

arjie 10y ago

There's a community of screaming angry children (not an insult, I mean literal teenagers and younger) who've got some sort of persecution complex and complain often about "censorship". Almost uniformly, the work of these people is not useful to anyone but them. And it is only useful to them in a sort of self gratifying perpetuation of their beliefs coupled with outrage. If you're an individual, I would advise steering clear of these groups. It's not productive to be a member. I think it's today's variant of the BSD v GPL, or Linux v Microsoft flame wars. It's an addictive thing to participate in. You have a team and you strongly present membership and identity. It's less about the principles behind it and more about which principles you can bring to serve your identity as part of the group membership. For an individual, this is a mental trap. You expend a great deal of effort on identification and none on being better. It's not worth it. I think the Ellen Pao thing was one of these identity rites. She was the opposite, and things others could be forgiven for would be heinous crimes if she'd done them.

dukeluke 10y ago
An us-vs-them mentality definitely amplified the outrage, but it began for legitimate purposes. Reddit really was a bastion of free speech in its early days, which was fantastic because people with thoughts that didn't align with the PC culture could find a place they liked. The community was afraid the changes implemented by Pao would be a slippery slope to conforming to the mainstream PC culture and reacted accordingly. And looking at how Reddit has changed in the last few years, I would say those fears were not unfounded in the least.