8 ms·

reddit is one of the simplest and easiest sites for a new user to learn to use. Somehow, Ellen Pao doesn't know how to use reddit, nevermind what the culture an

by lingben 11y ago

reddit is one of the simplest and easiest sites for a new user to learn to use. Somehow, Ellen Pao doesn't know how to use reddit, nevermind what the culture and community that has built over a decade truly means. She meant to send someone a pm but did a selfpost instead and then hurriedly erased it and banned everyone that responded to the selfpost: https://archive.is/9RFIp https://archive.is/9RFIp Reminds me of my grandmother sending me a picture by sending the c:/ link in the email.

flashman 11y ago
That link also illustrates how utterly hateful some parts of the Reddit community is. Being a Reddit admin must be really frustrating.
- lingben 11y ago
  It is a 2 way street. The community can be nasty but they do not treat every admin this way. Consider Victoria who was just fired. The whole shenanigan today isn't really about her but about the way the mods are being treated. But my point is that the community really appreciated her work and her approach. When you come in and right off the bat are condescending, haughty, and tone-deaf, as well as non-transparent, then don't be surprised if the internet is harsh. This is not to say I condone in any way shape or form the hateful things being said about Pao or others. I do however understand the dynamic and see how they had a very active role in creating the reaction. For example, consider if she had admitted her mistake and gasp! appeared human and asked for some patience while she learned the ropes. Imagine for a moment that instead, she didn't censor or remove the comments but relished the mistake, laughed at herself, posted a funny selfie and didn't try to hide it. Just a hypothetical scenario, that's all. She would appear normal, human and worthy of empathy. But when she doubles down and erases it, censors and bans people and doesn't address it. Are you surprised that the worst elements see these qualities and judge her harshly as a non-symapthetic figure who holds massive power over them with opacity, arbitrariness and condescension? Consider this analogy, if you don't know anything about bees and see a swarm on your tree branch, do you go apeshit and start screaming and swinging at the bees with a stick? and then go inside crying about how you are a 'victim' because the bees stung you hundreds of times? Another approach would be to learn a bit about beekeeping or hire a beekeeper who would know what to do. They would come in, treat the bees with the due attention and care, give them a new nuc [1] as a home and then enjoy years of delicious honey. An intelligent person would make their choice. A person who is driven by a cocktail of incompetence, entitlement and playing the victim would also make their choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuc TL;DR reddit needs a 'bee whisperer'
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    > The community can be nasty but they do not treat every admin this way Who would have thought that the minds responsible for redpill, mensrights, and coontown might make a community less than enjoyable?
    - beedogs 11y ago
      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.
      - curl_princess 11y ago
        FatPeopleHate was really recent. It exploded in popularity. It wasn't even a year old when it got banned. That was a lot of the issue, it grew faster than it could be controlled and when it started having the population to push posts to /r/all, people got mad.
      - ljk 11y ago
        same here, i have not heard about any of these extreme subreddit until the /r/fph announcement, and i've been on reddit before the "digg exodus" i wonder if non-reddit-users think of the entire reddit community as hateful...
        rodgerd 11y ago
        > i wonder if non-reddit-users think of the entire reddit community as hateful... Reddit is pretty much a byword for "steaming mound of vileness" around various chunks of the 'net. A couple of years ago I would have said it was no worse than old-school Usenet, but it seems to be increasingly suffering from the same problem Digg did before it died, of brigading, upvoting cartels, and so on. FPH is a high profile example, but there's a constant wash of racist brigading many of the defaults, even sweeping into dataisbeautiful after the Charleston church massacre.
        11y ago
- go1dfish 11y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/yishansucks https://www.reddit.com/r/yishansucks
- ljk 11y ago
  > That link also illustrates how utterly hateful some parts of the Reddit community is. I left a comment in that thread, but wasn't one of the hateful ones. While I don't think saying those hateful things are justified, I can see where they're coming from. This was right after the whole scandal with the banning, i think within 24hrs of the announcement, and a lot of them were passionate about the site, so they weren't really being friendy toward her
kaonashi 11y ago
Given the content of those replies, banning was entirely warranted.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  So some people call you names and that's too much to handle as a CEO that they need to be banned?
  - icanhackit 11y ago
    I tried the link provided but was unable to display the page, though as a citizen of the internet I can take a stab at the flavor of the insults. Given her recent gender discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins and potential appeal, it would have made strategic sense to block anything sexist. I don't know if that's what was in the content of the replies - just guessing. Also guessing it was pretty racist, and <checks underpants - yep, white penis> I can only imagine that shit got old more than a century ago.
tehwebguy 11y ago
Do you know if any users in that thread were actually banned? I checked out the reddit for the top level posts and it appears that many of them, even the ones that posted the most mean spirited comments in that thread, seem to be active. Most of them have plenty of recent comments with votes and replies. Maybe the banned had their comments deleted? I don't think that's how it works though.
- ljk 11y ago
  i commented on that thread, and i wasn't banned/shadowbanned
andreyf 11y ago
> Reminds me of my grandmother sending me a picture by sending the c:/ link in the email. Not really... there is no consistent clear way to tell if a web page is meant for your account only or public. For example, if someone @tweets at you, you can share that URL just fine. Given that reddit's notification system for public replies and private messages is identical (the orange envelope), it's really not that hard to confuse a private message with a public reply.
- mediocrejoker 11y ago
  If I want to see how a url will appear to someone before I send it, I open an incognito tab in chrome and paste it there. It doesn't have access to any of my currently open sessions, cookies, etc. so I see exactly what someone else will see when they click, and I send or don't send (or modify and send) accordingly.
  - andreyf 11y ago
    I do that too sometimes, but I wouldn't equate someone not doing it to "my grandma sending me the local path to a file".
- ljk 11y ago
  > * is no consistent clear way to tell if a web page is ...* i think it's the same with different technologies, it all depends on the user :p

by lingben 11y ago

flashman 11y ago

That link also illustrates how utterly hateful some parts of the Reddit community is. Being a Reddit admin must be really frustrating.

lingben 11y ago
It is a 2 way street. The community can be nasty but they do not treat every admin this way. Consider Victoria who was just fired. The whole shenanigan today isn't really about her but about the way the mods are being treated. But my point is that the community really appreciated her work and her approach. When you come in and right off the bat are condescending, haughty, and tone-deaf, as well as non-transparent, then don't be surprised if the internet is harsh. This is not to say I condone in any way shape or form the hateful things being said about Pao or others. I do however understand the dynamic and see how they had a very active role in creating the reaction. For example, consider if she had admitted her mistake and gasp! appeared human and asked for some patience while she learned the ropes. Imagine for a moment that instead, she didn't censor or remove the comments but relished the mistake, laughed at herself, posted a funny selfie and didn't try to hide it. Just a hypothetical scenario, that's all. She would appear normal, human and worthy of empathy. But when she doubles down and erases it, censors and bans people and doesn't address it. Are you surprised that the worst elements see these qualities and judge her harshly as a non-symapthetic figure who holds massive power over them with opacity, arbitrariness and condescension? Consider this analogy, if you don't know anything about bees and see a swarm on your tree branch, do you go apeshit and start screaming and swinging at the bees with a stick? and then go inside crying about how you are a 'victim' because the bees stung you hundreds of times? Another approach would be to learn a bit about beekeeping or hire a beekeeper who would know what to do. They would come in, treat the bees with the due attention and care, give them a new nuc [1] as a home and then enjoy years of delicious honey. An intelligent person would make their choice. A person who is driven by a cocktail of incompetence, entitlement and playing the victim would also make their choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuc TL;DR reddit needs a 'bee whisperer'
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > The community can be nasty but they do not treat every admin this way Who would have thought that the minds responsible for redpill, mensrights, and coontown might make a community less than enjoyable?
  - beedogs 11y ago
    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.
    - curl_princess 11y ago
      FatPeopleHate was really recent. It exploded in popularity. It wasn't even a year old when it got banned. That was a lot of the issue, it grew faster than it could be controlled and when it started having the population to push posts to /r/all, people got mad.
    - ljk 11y ago
      same here, i have not heard about any of these extreme subreddit until the /r/fph announcement, and i've been on reddit before the "digg exodus" i wonder if non-reddit-users think of the entire reddit community as hateful...
      - rodgerd 11y ago
        > i wonder if non-reddit-users think of the entire reddit community as hateful... Reddit is pretty much a byword for "steaming mound of vileness" around various chunks of the 'net. A couple of years ago I would have said it was no worse than old-school Usenet, but it seems to be increasingly suffering from the same problem Digg did before it died, of brigading, upvoting cartels, and so on. FPH is a high profile example, but there's a constant wash of racist brigading many of the defaults, even sweeping into dataisbeautiful after the Charleston church massacre.
      - 11y ago
go1dfish 11y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/yishansucks https://www.reddit.com/r/yishansucks
ljk 11y ago
> That link also illustrates how utterly hateful some parts of the Reddit community is. I left a comment in that thread, but wasn't one of the hateful ones. While I don't think saying those hateful things are justified, I can see where they're coming from. This was right after the whole scandal with the banning, i think within 24hrs of the announcement, and a lot of them were passionate about the site, so they weren't really being friendy toward her

kaonashi 11y ago

Given the content of those replies, banning was entirely warranted.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago
So some people call you names and that's too much to handle as a CEO that they need to be banned?
- icanhackit 11y ago
  I tried the link provided but was unable to display the page, though as a citizen of the internet I can take a stab at the flavor of the insults. Given her recent gender discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins and potential appeal, it would have made strategic sense to block anything sexist. I don't know if that's what was in the content of the replies - just guessing. Also guessing it was pretty racist, and <checks underpants - yep, white penis> I can only imagine that shit got old more than a century ago.

tehwebguy 11y ago

Do you know if any users in that thread were actually banned? I checked out the reddit for the top level posts and it appears that many of them, even the ones that posted the most mean spirited comments in that thread, seem to be active. Most of them have plenty of recent comments with votes and replies. Maybe the banned had their comments deleted? I don't think that's how it works though.

ljk 11y ago
i commented on that thread, and i wasn't banned/shadowbanned

andreyf 11y ago

> Reminds me of my grandmother sending me a picture by sending the c:/ link in the email. Not really... there is no consistent clear way to tell if a web page is meant for your account only or public. For example, if someone @tweets at you, you can share that URL just fine. Given that reddit's notification system for public replies and private messages is identical (the orange envelope), it's really not that hard to confuse a private message with a public reply.

mediocrejoker 11y ago
If I want to see how a url will appear to someone before I send it, I open an incognito tab in chrome and paste it there. It doesn't have access to any of my currently open sessions, cookies, etc. so I see exactly what someone else will see when they click, and I send or don't send (or modify and send) accordingly.
- andreyf 11y ago
  I do that too sometimes, but I wouldn't equate someone not doing it to "my grandma sending me the local path to a file".
ljk 11y ago
> * is no consistent clear way to tell if a web page is ...* i think it's the same with different technologies, it all depends on the user :p