11 ms·

I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to

I like Reddit, a lot, but the community is shit. I read this apology and then Ellen's reply and that has negative 55 hundred votes. They have no real reason to dislike her. They have no real reason to be mad at the one woman being fired. They're just coming off as a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired. But the hive have decided those are the things that the community should do (and dislike Justin Beiber and Kanye West and whatever else), and the community does it. I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset. Children are emotional.

McGlockenshire 11y ago
Now, imagine what's going to happen as these angry users leave for somewhere else. They're going to take their attitude with them, and the admins of that future site are going to have to deal with the same exact mentality. Communities that suffer schisms like the one reddit is working itself into don't fare well. You can't build a healthy community out of a mindset like "well, we aren't THEM". This has happened time after time, and I've been on both sides of the problem, sometimes as a user, sometimes as the admin.
Nadya 11y ago
Victoria being let off ruined a lot of currently planned AMA's - because she played such a huge part in it all. It's like firing the person who wrote a language your company uses internally with little to no documentation: absolutely everything is going to go to hell until someone comes in, learns what and how things were done, and can replace that person. With no word as to why she left or was fired - it screams something political or a massive disconnect with the userbase. AMA's on Reddit are a pretty huge deal. It's a large part of Reddit's popularity - such that even the POTUS has had an "AMA" on Reddit. So when you disrupt how they work and give absolutely no word as to why the person who played such a large part in many AMA's being scheduled, planned, and hosted: you're going to step on a lot of toes. I read one story of a person flying to New York for an AMA. He had to change his plans and work with the person planning the AMA to schedule different interviews or sightseeing on his time because the AMA was cancelled due to Victoria being let off. That's a loss of a person's time and money with no explanation being given for why someone who was performing their job suddenly wasn't tasked with the job. I'd be pretty peeved myself. Luckily the man was very understanding it was outside of the moderator's control with Victoria being let off, but I imagine some mods aren't as lucky with their scheduled AMA's.
- sp332 11y ago
  Right, this isn't about firing the person but about the complete lack of communication with all the other people that action affected. That said, I have to agree with most of GP's points. The amount of vitriol aimed at Pao doesn't seem to jibe with anything she's actually done.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Given how open Reddit's structure is (in the sense that it gives non-employees strong moderator rights and works to make them feel part of the community), are they treading untrodden ground in walking the tightrope between keeping the community in the loop and respecting the right to privacy of their employee? Maybe Victoria was let go because the big mean American tech industry is full of misogynists and she's another casualty in the culture war. Or maybe she was let go because Reddit can't afford to pay her. Or maybe she was let go because she profoundly screwed the company over. The fact of the matter is that the privacy door swings both ways (protects the company, but also protects the employee). We don't know and we don't have a right to know---neither do the moderators. But that aspect of right to know is traditional. In an ecosystem with so many (essentially) volunteer staff members, perhaps the traditional rules can't be cleanly applied. I suspect the sift-out of this situation will teach people much about how to operate heavy-volunteer corporations.
- jeletonskelly 11y ago
  AMA worked fine before all the organization and planning of celebrity appearances. If you're a celebrity or politician or whatever, just hop on, make a post, message a mod for verification or post something to twitter and have at it. The only reason it became so ridiculous is because the mods themselves wanted to feel important, like they were "running" AMA. If some "important" person can't use the internet, then don't do an AMA or find someone to help you. Why there needs to be an employee and all this formality is beyond me...
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I suspect the added complexity is because of the care some of the more visible AMA subjects take in managing their image.
jordigh 11y ago
And they were attacking her with sexist and racist comments. Classic Reddit: 4chan 2.0
- shock-value 11y ago
  It's the price that's paid to have a site that encourages anonymity. You can't deny that there are benefits to said anonymity at the same time though.
  - jordigh 11y ago
    I don't think so. I don't see this kind of behaviour widely upvoted in HN or in Lobsters, and we're no less anonymous here or there.
    - chaostheory 11y ago
      We're a much smaller community with a much smaller scope in topics as well. Reddit is another animal.
    - mrec 11y ago
      HN is small and heavily weighted towards programming-related types. You don't see that kind of behaviour widely upvoted in the smaller programming-related subreddits either. I'm a heavy Reddit user who steers well clear of the default-sub cesspits, and I basically never see it.
    - gohrt 11y ago
      HN moderation is design in a way that forces very slow growth, which controls the content of new posters/posts. You can't get to an X-million posting community with that style. FWIW, Slashdot comments sit between HN and Reddit. Also, HN intentionally avoids most controversial kinds of top-level post content that Reddit explicitly encourages in subreddits.
    - jessedhillon 11y ago
      Could I ask you for an invitation to lobsters?
baakss 11y ago
I tend to (maybe unjustly) associate the Reddit community as being the Gamergate community. I think Ellen Pao may immediately conjure up a perceived connection with the SJW scene, especially after her lawsuit. If I had to guess, that's probably where a lot of the hate is derived from.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Very unjustly. That's a tiny percentage of overall usage.
- LeoNatan25 11y ago
  No, the hate comes from a frivolous lawsuit, terrible policies, terrible management and overall terrible CEO. None of that has anything to do it with video games, SJW or her being a woman.
Raphmedia 11y ago
Disclaimer: I have been a moderator on a website of slightly less than a million registered users from 2003 to 2008 so I have my heart on the moderator's side. The moderators of Reddit actually have very legitimate issues and are bringing points that need to be addressed. Moderators of websites as big as reddit should be managed correctly and supervised. They should also have a line on communication with the administrators of the website for issues such as this one. They should also receive proper tools needed to ensure that their work is done correctly and in a timely fashion. Reddit's moderators have even greater responsibilities than moderators of more normals websites have. Their efforts on this point should be rewarded or at the very least recognized. It isn't the administrator of Reddit that attracts celebrities to the websites. It isn't the administrator of Reddit that create the quality content that is in subreddits like /r/askhistorians, and /r/science and all the other serious subreddits. It is the users and superusers, all self-managed by the moderators. Some subreddit are ecosystems that are bigger, better staffed and more organized that a lot of websites out there. To say openly that moderators and content creators are simply creating a ruckus out of nothing and should be ignored is biting the hand that feeds you. Those people are people of passions, and people of passions will hate quickly and move on to a better suited ecosystem even faster. The firing of that employee was only the bottlecap blowing out from all the pressure. She also ended up a martyr to push the strike into the mind of regular users. Otherwise, she is barely related to what happened on reddit recently.
- SerpentJoe 11y ago
  There are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about how Reddit empowers the volunteer work of moderators, but that is the least of the complaints that are clogging the site right now. There are three major objections being raised loudly and repeatedly: 1) Moderators, who provide a huge portion of the value of the site, are treated with disrespect by the organization. 2) An employee whose availability was useful to a few major subreddits was dismissed without warning, leaving those subreddits in the lurch, which is emblematic of the above disrespect. 3) Ellen Pao is CEO. These are presented in decreasing order of relevance to the actual problem, and increasing order of urgency to those driving the discussion. Pao needs to do an AMA. A small number of users is upset at her stance in favor of diversity and against sexism, and because she's historically refused to directly engage a community that's gotten used to having direct access to movie stars and presidents, those few have been able to convince many more that she's a cold bitch and doesn't deserve respect. She needs to be on the front page all day gracefully responding to the revolting things being said about her so that normal users can remember that she's an actual person and not an anonymous force of nature advancing evil in the world. Edit: Seems that's what she's doing right now.
psychometry 11y ago
One look at the completely irrelevant second sentence of the petition to remove her [1] should tell you everything to know about why users are actually angry at her. This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror. Reddit has harbored toxic subreddits for long enough that they've nurtured a huge user base of racists and misogynists. It's a demographic crisis and it apparently doesn't take much to incite these mobs. These vocal and active users hated Pao before she became reddit CEO and these events were entirely predictable. [1] https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-reddit-inc https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-red...
- shock-value 11y ago
  You could say the same about Twitter's hosting individuals who espouse toxic views. I believe that Reddit essentially wants to be a Twitter for communities (as opposed to individuals), in that they aren't interested in guiding the moral ethos of its userbase (beyond removing illegal or harassing content). So, honest question, would you apply your criticism to Twitter? (and if not, why not?)
  - psychometry 11y ago
    I don't use Twitter, so I have no idea. But each company, despite their freewheeling public images, has a right to dictate how their services are used. If that means adopting a stronger stance on these toxic elements in order to improve their user experience (and attractiveness to advertisers), it's probably best to do it. Reddit is not beholden to to their users to the degree that those users probably believe. Nor are they beholden to some imagined ethos about being a place where all speech is protected.
    - shock-value 11y ago
      > Reddit is not beholden to to their users to the degree that those users probably believe. It's cliché at this point, but I'll say it anyway: Tell that to Digg
    - 11y ago
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired. Supposedly she helped with setting up a lot of IAMAs as well as fighting to keep their integrity up (i.e. identifying when an actor's agent was posing as that actor as part of a marketing ploy). Even if you really liked IAMAs and what I've heard is completely true, these are benefits you wouldn't directly notice. It is like the average computer user feeling slighted by the Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish or the average voter feeling slighted by the TPP. These have nasty effects, but they are not at all direct in the harm they cause, and as such people do not feel slighted even when they have been.
- chaostheory 11y ago
  Was this why Victoria was fired?
  - freebish 11y ago
    No one has publicly said why she was fired. We only know it happened rapidly. It happened shortly after a Jesse Jackson AMA that went way off the rails, but that could be coincidence.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    As I understand it: nobody knows why Victoria was fired, and speculating will probably do more harm than any possible good.
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      Is it speculating or finding out the truth that would do harm in your opinion? Her firing is at the very center of a very public controversy - why should it be a secret? Victoria is most likely legally barred from speaking out, so the facts would need to come from third-party witnesses.
forgottenpass 11y ago
They're unpaid contributors to very general interest content, of course it's going to be full of low quality submissions and commenters. Hell, even blogs on general entertainment and "news entertainment" subject matter are full of catty assholes for paid writers. That's just the territory of targeting a wide audience on the internet, and you sorta have to accept it for what it is, because it isn't changing anything soon. The worst thing you can do is let that behavior poison the well for you. There is always going to be someone who shares your opinions but you don't like their reasoning or the way they choose to share their reasoning. You don't want other people to write your ideas off because some people that agree with you are assholes, so extend the same courtesy to people you don't agree with. I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset. Yes, you can. There is more than one answer, and 10x more people that are just into bandwagon shouting than thoroughly articulating their positions, but that doesn't mean you can't find it. It means you don't want to try.
tedks 11y ago
> They have no real reason to dislike her. Imagine you're a freshman in college. You join a club and make friends with the people there. Quickly, the club becomes the center of your social life as you make friends with other people there and most of your time, formally or informally, revolves around the club. As you get older, the club changes as old members leave and new members come. In two years, you feel like things are "going downhill", but just try to do your part a little better, and while you don't feel like you can have any effect on the larger portions (like the big introductory events) you have a little social circle that enjoys what you do, and you focus on making that the best place it can be. However, when you're a junior, the leadership of the club starts changing rapidly. In six months there are two club presidents, each less liked than the last. Because of the way the university is structured, it would be very difficult to start a new club, or to get members of the previous club to come to the new club, and you've built up a lot of credential within the organization that will evaporate if you leave. You're in a difficult situation now. You've invested a lot in this community. But top-down changes, possibly combined with normal drift over time, make it look like this community is going downhill. Suddenly, you feel like your little social circle will become an island in a hostile place rather than a part of a bigger organism. >As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen A casual X of any Y has no real reason to feel strongly about changes in Y. If I casually played golf, I wouldn't care if the rules changed. If I casually wrote iOS apps, I wouldn't care if Apple took a bigger or smaller cut. If I casually participated in politics, I would be unconcerned about changes that people who are above the level of casual are quite concerned with. Deciding that because you do not feel personal investment with communities on reddit you are somehow above the "children" who do is misinformed. If you are a casual user you have no reason to be invested and no reason to care. But to someone who feels close to a community that happens to live on reddit, these changes are scary. All of a sudden the administration team of reddit isn't the friendly, startup-vibe-having, tight-knight team of nerds that do cool april fools pranks and sometimes leave witty comments in pun threads. The Reddit admins have become depersonalized, and lately, they have been making changes that are very intrusive into the site. Whether you agree with those changes is immaterial. The fact is Reddit has moved from a mostly hands-off admin stance to a more hands-on one. It's impossible to summarize this in a straight answer, because the fundamental reason why people are so upset over this (you are right that they are minor events -- only in the context of the larger reddit/community relationship do they become significant) is mere fear of change, and of the unknown. I think Redditors are very aware of the precarity of their communities. They don't want to lose them, but they think they might now, more so than they used to. I hope this gives you a better idea of why Redditors might be upset. It's important to remember that every time we can't think of a likely true motivation for someone's actions, that is our own ignorance of human psychology, not a signifier of irrationality on the part of the person we observe. It's easy to write this off with bigotry or ageism, but that doesn't bring us closer to the truth.
dominotw 11y ago
Not all of her answers are downvoted. This one from 15 minutes ago has 100's of upvotes. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/csu2v63 https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap... Get off your moral high-horse.
pbreit 11y ago
She's not very likable. You don't see down voting like this for Alexis, Yishan or, elsewhere, PG and SamA. She still speaks more in MBA-ease like "providing tools" and "listening to users" and "communicated poorly", etc. And the person fired was by most accounts a well-liked, very visible, performing employee. Dismissing someone like that with very little care was horrific management. Edit: I don't know why I included Alexis since he also comes off pretty smug and user-hostile (e.g. "popcorn time").
- iaw 11y ago
  I've met a lot of people I'd consider 'success' focused individuals in the Ivies, I suspect if I met her I'd consider her in the same group. There is a focus on a narrow definition of success that is more important than anything else. How that success is accomplished doesn't matter, just that it is. The behavior is surprisingly irrespective of traditional intellect or competence, it's pure focus and drive. It also is not about doing anything well per se, it's just about gaining stature.
  - innguest 11y ago
    It's called Narcissism.
    - iaw 11y ago
      I don't know if it maps perfectly to narcissism because there is a huge effort component that is not requisite to being a narcissist but is ever-present in the group I'm trying to describe.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  When I looked at his account during the height of the anger, Alexis's every comment was below -1,000. He got downvoted hard.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    You're right. I made an edit.
onedev 11y ago
Kanye West is an amazing amazing figure, and a really interesting personality. If all you know about the man are his misplaced frustrations that manifest themselves in public ways, then you really don't know the guy or the influence he's had on millions over a decade. He's produced greatness, but not only that, he's done so consistently. He's made some missteps along the way but if you really dig deep and watch his interviews over the years you'll start to understand the person he is. People are very interesting, and it's so easy to characterize public figures in these black and white ways and dismiss their work, but it's far more difficult to truly understand the person, their motivations, and their frustrations. I've watched hours and hours of Kanye interviews, listened to days and days of his music, and watched him grow as a person as he progressed through his legendary career. It's truly incredible. I think there's something be learned from Justin Bieber as well, whose music I don't like and whose fanbase I dislike even more. People are fascinating, you just have to dig deeper to find those parts, and put forth effort to learn something from other people. Even those people you don't like.
- celticninja 11y ago
  but you can legitimately dislike someone, Kanye is incredibly conceited. I appreciate his music (well first 4 anyway) but his attitude sucks. Even at glastonbury he was stopping the performance to tell the crowd they were witnessing the greatest rock star ever. That just isnt true and if he actually believes it then he is making more of an idiot of himself. You dont decide you are the greatest rock star, the people do, and they discuss it for a long time before they come to that conclusion. You need to be compared to historical greats to even come close. The only person I see talking about Kanye in that way is Kanye. I should not need to wade through hours of footage to see him portrayed in a favourable light, if he acts a dick when he knows he is being watched/recorded/broadcast then it is a safe assumption to make that he is generally a dick.
- bentcorner 11y ago
  reddit seems to have a fascination with Kanye's "thug face". It's practically a meme where he's jovial and happy until the camera is put on him.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
thearn4 11y ago
I've been on reddit for a few years, but never really took in how toxic the community is until I started following this. I cannot for the life of me understand how seriously people take that site and the things that go on there. It's like middle school lunchroom politics.
- emehrkay 11y ago
  Maybe I'd be as invested if my Reddit check stopped coming in or it started to look funny after Ellen took over.
vonklaus 11y ago
I know you are trolling, but people legitimately are asking this question so I will respond. >I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset. >they're >they Reddit is 160 million people because it is a huge online community. Calling them children and referring to them as a contiguous unit of alike individuals is laughable. So there isn't a straight answer why some subset of 160 million people are angry but a lot of them are for various reasons. >I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired Brendan Eich was way more qualified to run Mozilla than Pao is to run reddit. He was really fucking good at his job and is one of the smartest engineers in tech. He couldn't effectively do his job and had to resign. It doesn't matter if the backlash was fair, it was impacting the company negatively. Pao is not the right person to run reddit, hasn't made great decisions, is followed by personal scandal and is generally detested by the community(which is reddits product). She has to step down whether you feel slighted about it or not.
- nahiluhmot 11y ago
  What makes you think parent is trolling?
  - vonklaus 11y ago
    Calling people emotional children and upset kids is just flame inducing. Maybe that person wasn't actually trolling but it was obvious crafted to illicit an angry response.
    - dschulz 11y ago
      *elicit
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      Even where trolling is highly probable, "assume good faith" is generally a better tactic.
- psychometry 11y ago
  Don't you think you're being a bit premature in your assessment of Pao? She's an interim CEO who's been on the job mere months. Shutting down the subreddits she did needed to happen in order for reddit to be viable long-term. This latest issue is just about disaffected male teenagers looking for a reason to get mad at the new female CEO. It's so transparent and so pathetic.
ryanSrich 11y ago
Wow. I really didn't expect this type of shill comment on HN. I mean, I know YC has a vested interest in Reddit but this comment is just awful. Perhaps you should look into what real issues exist within Reddit before saying everyone who doesn't think favorable of EP is an angry "child".
celticninja 11y ago
>They have no real reason to dislike her. I dont think that is true. I have used reddit for quite some time, probably since 2006. I have no personal animosity toward her however I dont think she is the right leader for reddit. And I say that as a user, not an owner, shareholder, employee etc. My reasons are because I like they way the old reddit operated. The reason that I say that is because when I started using reddit the free speech ethic was proudly trumpeted. This was around the time of the DeCSS key event that started the downfall of Digg. Even up to as recently as 2012 Yishan Wong was reaffirming reddits commitment as a free speech platform. This was around the time of the r/jailbait takedown. But really that was the beginning of the end, r/jailbait was shut down because of illegal content being posted. I never saw definitive proof of that and I dont think any was offered. This was about the time that there was media interest in reddit (and to be fair r/jailabit was one of the more embarassing links that could and did show up on a google search for reddit). So it went and with it the start of a slippery slope of censorship began. After r/jailabit (which the majority of users agreed with) there was the fappening, again a lot of users agreed, but all these agreeable users were relatively new, they were here for cat pictures and memes. They didnt care about reddit as a free speech platform because their interests were not affected. Then we arrive at r/fatpeoplehate being banned. This went because of 'harassment'. Now we are at a stage where reddit is going to be kept clean and media friendly. It is not a free speech site (and I dont need to hear about free speech does not have to be protected by a businesss, i know that) even though it started off like that and it attracted a lot of users like that and those users built the communities that make reddit thrive. I dont post that often anymore, i very rarely submit content anymore, I am not as attached to my accounts as I used to be. I am looking for alternatives because the site has changed so much (and so has the userbase) that the content it now has is no longer as relevant as it once was and this is only going to continue under the current leadership, and once a certain point is passed there is no getting it back. If she went now it may be retrieveable, if she lasts another 6-12 months in her position then it may not be.
- x0x0 11y ago
  You're making this far too personal. Reddit is and was a shitty business; afaik, they lost money every year at least through 2012 (Yishan released not raw numbers but a graph showing expenses > revenue). Reddit has to change: at some point, they will either make money, become a billionaire's hobby or vanish. That's completely separate from the fact that certain people were happy to host jailbait and stolen celebrity titty pics and others are ashamed to be associated with people who do and/or support the former. Ellen has little do with any of the above except her current remit to make reddit into a functioning -- that is, profitable -- business. But any ceo will have that task.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
serve_yay 11y ago
If they're the problem, why is she apologizing to them for doing wrong by them? Why is a supposedly community-based website run by someone the community hates? You don't have to love reddit's community to smell a rat here. It's a complete shitshow.
- psychometry 11y ago
  She's apologizing for the firing, not her existence. Reddit would seem to prefer having her apologize for an irrelevant lawsuit and then resign because the lawsuit conflicts with the personal beliefs of an ever-growing contingent of bitter, young males.
celticninja 11y ago
The community is what you make it and who you enagage with. You see a shit community because you probably dont get involved in anything other than the default subreddits. You read the r/funny comments and see LCD comments for karma, that is a shit part of reddit I agree, but it is just a part of reddit it doesnt represent the whole community. The reddit community just gets cherry picked depending on the view you want to put across. 'Bad Guys' - find an appropriate reddit, e.g. r/picsofdeadkids, or r/hangniggers or just go to r/SRS and choose a topic, sexism, racism etc, choose a particualarly vile comment from a single user and then say look this is representative of reddit, what a hive of scum and villainy. 'Good Guys' - go to r/randomactsofkindness or r/randomactsofpizza, or any local subreddit like r/oregon and find a heart warming story of a user sending another user a new laptop when theirs was stolen right before finals, or turning up with money for a hotel when a guy and his kid get stuck in a new city at night after a football game, or any of a hundred other amazing things that people do for one another just because they are a user of the same site. Generalising like you have and saying you cant even get an answer about why they are upset is evidently trolling or laziness on your behalf as anyone with 10 minutes could find out the reasons behind the dislike of Pao just by reading the r/announcements and the user comments that go along with them.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
arfliw 11y ago
With regard to Victoria, she ran the AMA's and was very popular with redditors. Think of it like a sports team cutting a really popular player, without offering an explanation. The fanbase would be really unhappy about that. And this is what reddit does when it's unhappy about something. The Ellen Pao stuff is complicated, she does have some fault for being the one who made unpopular decisions and the way she managed the process (particularly extremely poor communication) but in general I agree that she gets way too much criticism from the community. She's very unpopular for a bunch of things that are not actually her fault (like people who incorrectly think she censors reddit).
tripzilch 11y ago
> a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. In all fairness, a lot of their users are probably kids. Who are upset.

McGlockenshire 11y ago

Now, imagine what's going to happen as these angry users leave for somewhere else. They're going to take their attitude with them, and the admins of that future site are going to have to deal with the same exact mentality. Communities that suffer schisms like the one reddit is working itself into don't fare well. You can't build a healthy community out of a mindset like "well, we aren't THEM". This has happened time after time, and I've been on both sides of the problem, sometimes as a user, sometimes as the admin.

Nadya 11y ago

Victoria being let off ruined a lot of currently planned AMA's - because she played such a huge part in it all. It's like firing the person who wrote a language your company uses internally with little to no documentation: absolutely everything is going to go to hell until someone comes in, learns what and how things were done, and can replace that person. With no word as to why she left or was fired - it screams something political or a massive disconnect with the userbase. AMA's on Reddit are a pretty huge deal. It's a large part of Reddit's popularity - such that even the POTUS has had an "AMA" on Reddit. So when you disrupt how they work and give absolutely no word as to why the person who played such a large part in many AMA's being scheduled, planned, and hosted: you're going to step on a lot of toes. I read one story of a person flying to New York for an AMA. He had to change his plans and work with the person planning the AMA to schedule different interviews or sightseeing on his time because the AMA was cancelled due to Victoria being let off. That's a loss of a person's time and money with no explanation being given for why someone who was performing their job suddenly wasn't tasked with the job. I'd be pretty peeved myself. Luckily the man was very understanding it was outside of the moderator's control with Victoria being let off, but I imagine some mods aren't as lucky with their scheduled AMA's.

sp332 11y ago
Right, this isn't about firing the person but about the complete lack of communication with all the other people that action affected. That said, I have to agree with most of GP's points. The amount of vitriol aimed at Pao doesn't seem to jibe with anything she's actually done.
- fixermark 11y ago
  Given how open Reddit's structure is (in the sense that it gives non-employees strong moderator rights and works to make them feel part of the community), are they treading untrodden ground in walking the tightrope between keeping the community in the loop and respecting the right to privacy of their employee? Maybe Victoria was let go because the big mean American tech industry is full of misogynists and she's another casualty in the culture war. Or maybe she was let go because Reddit can't afford to pay her. Or maybe she was let go because she profoundly screwed the company over. The fact of the matter is that the privacy door swings both ways (protects the company, but also protects the employee). We don't know and we don't have a right to know---neither do the moderators. But that aspect of right to know is traditional. In an ecosystem with so many (essentially) volunteer staff members, perhaps the traditional rules can't be cleanly applied. I suspect the sift-out of this situation will teach people much about how to operate heavy-volunteer corporations.
jeletonskelly 11y ago
AMA worked fine before all the organization and planning of celebrity appearances. If you're a celebrity or politician or whatever, just hop on, make a post, message a mod for verification or post something to twitter and have at it. The only reason it became so ridiculous is because the mods themselves wanted to feel important, like they were "running" AMA. If some "important" person can't use the internet, then don't do an AMA or find someone to help you. Why there needs to be an employee and all this formality is beyond me...
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I suspect the added complexity is because of the care some of the more visible AMA subjects take in managing their image.

jordigh 11y ago

And they were attacking her with sexist and racist comments. Classic Reddit: 4chan 2.0

shock-value 11y ago
It's the price that's paid to have a site that encourages anonymity. You can't deny that there are benefits to said anonymity at the same time though.
- jordigh 11y ago
  I don't think so. I don't see this kind of behaviour widely upvoted in HN or in Lobsters, and we're no less anonymous here or there.
  - chaostheory 11y ago
    We're a much smaller community with a much smaller scope in topics as well. Reddit is another animal.
  - mrec 11y ago
    HN is small and heavily weighted towards programming-related types. You don't see that kind of behaviour widely upvoted in the smaller programming-related subreddits either. I'm a heavy Reddit user who steers well clear of the default-sub cesspits, and I basically never see it.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    HN moderation is design in a way that forces very slow growth, which controls the content of new posters/posts. You can't get to an X-million posting community with that style. FWIW, Slashdot comments sit between HN and Reddit. Also, HN intentionally avoids most controversial kinds of top-level post content that Reddit explicitly encourages in subreddits.
  - jessedhillon 11y ago
    Could I ask you for an invitation to lobsters?

baakss 11y ago

I tend to (maybe unjustly) associate the Reddit community as being the Gamergate community. I think Ellen Pao may immediately conjure up a perceived connection with the SJW scene, especially after her lawsuit. If I had to guess, that's probably where a lot of the hate is derived from.

pbreit 11y ago
Very unjustly. That's a tiny percentage of overall usage.
LeoNatan25 11y ago
No, the hate comes from a frivolous lawsuit, terrible policies, terrible management and overall terrible CEO. None of that has anything to do it with video games, SJW or her being a woman.

Raphmedia 11y ago

Disclaimer: I have been a moderator on a website of slightly less than a million registered users from 2003 to 2008 so I have my heart on the moderator's side. The moderators of Reddit actually have very legitimate issues and are bringing points that need to be addressed. Moderators of websites as big as reddit should be managed correctly and supervised. They should also have a line on communication with the administrators of the website for issues such as this one. They should also receive proper tools needed to ensure that their work is done correctly and in a timely fashion. Reddit's moderators have even greater responsibilities than moderators of more normals websites have. Their efforts on this point should be rewarded or at the very least recognized. It isn't the administrator of Reddit that attracts celebrities to the websites. It isn't the administrator of Reddit that create the quality content that is in subreddits like /r/askhistorians, and /r/science and all the other serious subreddits. It is the users and superusers, all self-managed by the moderators. Some subreddit are ecosystems that are bigger, better staffed and more organized that a lot of websites out there. To say openly that moderators and content creators are simply creating a ruckus out of nothing and should be ignored is biting the hand that feeds you. Those people are people of passions, and people of passions will hate quickly and move on to a better suited ecosystem even faster. The firing of that employee was only the bottlecap blowing out from all the pressure. She also ended up a martyr to push the strike into the mind of regular users. Otherwise, she is barely related to what happened on reddit recently.

SerpentJoe 11y ago
There are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about how Reddit empowers the volunteer work of moderators, but that is the least of the complaints that are clogging the site right now. There are three major objections being raised loudly and repeatedly: 1) Moderators, who provide a huge portion of the value of the site, are treated with disrespect by the organization. 2) An employee whose availability was useful to a few major subreddits was dismissed without warning, leaving those subreddits in the lurch, which is emblematic of the above disrespect. 3) Ellen Pao is CEO. These are presented in decreasing order of relevance to the actual problem, and increasing order of urgency to those driving the discussion. Pao needs to do an AMA. A small number of users is upset at her stance in favor of diversity and against sexism, and because she's historically refused to directly engage a community that's gotten used to having direct access to movie stars and presidents, those few have been able to convince many more that she's a cold bitch and doesn't deserve respect. She needs to be on the front page all day gracefully responding to the revolting things being said about her so that normal users can remember that she's an actual person and not an anonymous force of nature advancing evil in the world. Edit: Seems that's what she's doing right now.

psychometry 11y ago

One look at the completely irrelevant second sentence of the petition to remove her [1] should tell you everything to know about why users are actually angry at her. This outcry would've been minor if reddit had a male CEO without the failed lawsuit in the rear view mirror. Reddit has harbored toxic subreddits for long enough that they've nurtured a huge user base of racists and misogynists. It's a demographic crisis and it apparently doesn't take much to incite these mobs. These vocal and active users hated Pao before she became reddit CEO and these events were entirely predictable. [1] https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-reddit-inc https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-red...

shock-value 11y ago
You could say the same about Twitter's hosting individuals who espouse toxic views. I believe that Reddit essentially wants to be a Twitter for communities (as opposed to individuals), in that they aren't interested in guiding the moral ethos of its userbase (beyond removing illegal or harassing content). So, honest question, would you apply your criticism to Twitter? (and if not, why not?)
- psychometry 11y ago
  I don't use Twitter, so I have no idea. But each company, despite their freewheeling public images, has a right to dictate how their services are used. If that means adopting a stronger stance on these toxic elements in order to improve their user experience (and attractiveness to advertisers), it's probably best to do it. Reddit is not beholden to to their users to the degree that those users probably believe. Nor are they beholden to some imagined ethos about being a place where all speech is protected.
  - shock-value 11y ago
    > Reddit is not beholden to to their users to the degree that those users probably believe. It's cliché at this point, but I'll say it anyway: Tell that to Digg
  - 11y ago

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired. Supposedly she helped with setting up a lot of IAMAs as well as fighting to keep their integrity up (i.e. identifying when an actor's agent was posing as that actor as part of a marketing ploy). Even if you really liked IAMAs and what I've heard is completely true, these are benefits you wouldn't directly notice. It is like the average computer user feeling slighted by the Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish or the average voter feeling slighted by the TPP. These have nasty effects, but they are not at all direct in the harm they cause, and as such people do not feel slighted even when they have been.

chaostheory 11y ago
Was this why Victoria was fired?
- freebish 11y ago
  No one has publicly said why she was fired. We only know it happened rapidly. It happened shortly after a Jesse Jackson AMA that went way off the rails, but that could be coincidence.
- tptacek 11y ago
  As I understand it: nobody knows why Victoria was fired, and speculating will probably do more harm than any possible good.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    Is it speculating or finding out the truth that would do harm in your opinion? Her firing is at the very center of a very public controversy - why should it be a secret? Victoria is most likely legally barred from speaking out, so the facts would need to come from third-party witnesses.

forgottenpass 11y ago

They're unpaid contributors to very general interest content, of course it's going to be full of low quality submissions and commenters. Hell, even blogs on general entertainment and "news entertainment" subject matter are full of catty assholes for paid writers. That's just the territory of targeting a wide audience on the internet, and you sorta have to accept it for what it is, because it isn't changing anything soon. The worst thing you can do is let that behavior poison the well for you. There is always going to be someone who shares your opinions but you don't like their reasoning or the way they choose to share their reasoning. You don't want other people to write your ideas off because some people that agree with you are assholes, so extend the same courtesy to people you don't agree with. I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset. Yes, you can. There is more than one answer, and 10x more people that are just into bandwagon shouting than thoroughly articulating their positions, but that doesn't mean you can't find it. It means you don't want to try.

tedks 11y ago

> They have no real reason to dislike her. Imagine you're a freshman in college. You join a club and make friends with the people there. Quickly, the club becomes the center of your social life as you make friends with other people there and most of your time, formally or informally, revolves around the club. As you get older, the club changes as old members leave and new members come. In two years, you feel like things are "going downhill", but just try to do your part a little better, and while you don't feel like you can have any effect on the larger portions (like the big introductory events) you have a little social circle that enjoys what you do, and you focus on making that the best place it can be. However, when you're a junior, the leadership of the club starts changing rapidly. In six months there are two club presidents, each less liked than the last. Because of the way the university is structured, it would be very difficult to start a new club, or to get members of the previous club to come to the new club, and you've built up a lot of credential within the organization that will evaporate if you leave. You're in a difficult situation now. You've invested a lot in this community. But top-down changes, possibly combined with normal drift over time, make it look like this community is going downhill. Suddenly, you feel like your little social circle will become an island in a hostile place rather than a part of a bigger organism. >As a casual user I have no need to dislike Ellen A casual X of any Y has no real reason to feel strongly about changes in Y. If I casually played golf, I wouldn't care if the rules changed. If I casually wrote iOS apps, I wouldn't care if Apple took a bigger or smaller cut. If I casually participated in politics, I would be unconcerned about changes that people who are above the level of casual are quite concerned with. Deciding that because you do not feel personal investment with communities on reddit you are somehow above the "children" who do is misinformed. If you are a casual user you have no reason to be invested and no reason to care. But to someone who feels close to a community that happens to live on reddit, these changes are scary. All of a sudden the administration team of reddit isn't the friendly, startup-vibe-having, tight-knight team of nerds that do cool april fools pranks and sometimes leave witty comments in pun threads. The Reddit admins have become depersonalized, and lately, they have been making changes that are very intrusive into the site. Whether you agree with those changes is immaterial. The fact is Reddit has moved from a mostly hands-off admin stance to a more hands-on one. It's impossible to summarize this in a straight answer, because the fundamental reason why people are so upset over this (you are right that they are minor events -- only in the context of the larger reddit/community relationship do they become significant) is mere fear of change, and of the unknown. I think Redditors are very aware of the precarity of their communities. They don't want to lose them, but they think they might now, more so than they used to. I hope this gives you a better idea of why Redditors might be upset. It's important to remember that every time we can't think of a likely true motivation for someone's actions, that is our own ignorance of human psychology, not a signifier of irrationality on the part of the person we observe. It's easy to write this off with bigotry or ageism, but that doesn't bring us closer to the truth.

dominotw 11y ago

Not all of her answers are downvoted. This one from 15 minutes ago has 100's of upvotes. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/csu2v63 https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap... Get off your moral high-horse.

pbreit 11y ago

She's not very likable. You don't see down voting like this for Alexis, Yishan or, elsewhere, PG and SamA. She still speaks more in MBA-ease like "providing tools" and "listening to users" and "communicated poorly", etc. And the person fired was by most accounts a well-liked, very visible, performing employee. Dismissing someone like that with very little care was horrific management. Edit: I don't know why I included Alexis since he also comes off pretty smug and user-hostile (e.g. "popcorn time").

iaw 11y ago
I've met a lot of people I'd consider 'success' focused individuals in the Ivies, I suspect if I met her I'd consider her in the same group. There is a focus on a narrow definition of success that is more important than anything else. How that success is accomplished doesn't matter, just that it is. The behavior is surprisingly irrespective of traditional intellect or competence, it's pure focus and drive. It also is not about doing anything well per se, it's just about gaining stature.
- innguest 11y ago
  It's called Narcissism.
  - iaw 11y ago
    I don't know if it maps perfectly to narcissism because there is a huge effort component that is not requisite to being a narcissist but is ever-present in the group I'm trying to describe.
snowwrestler 11y ago
When I looked at his account during the height of the anger, Alexis's every comment was below -1,000. He got downvoted hard.
- pbreit 11y ago
  You're right. I made an edit.

onedev 11y ago

Kanye West is an amazing amazing figure, and a really interesting personality. If all you know about the man are his misplaced frustrations that manifest themselves in public ways, then you really don't know the guy or the influence he's had on millions over a decade. He's produced greatness, but not only that, he's done so consistently. He's made some missteps along the way but if you really dig deep and watch his interviews over the years you'll start to understand the person he is. People are very interesting, and it's so easy to characterize public figures in these black and white ways and dismiss their work, but it's far more difficult to truly understand the person, their motivations, and their frustrations. I've watched hours and hours of Kanye interviews, listened to days and days of his music, and watched him grow as a person as he progressed through his legendary career. It's truly incredible. I think there's something be learned from Justin Bieber as well, whose music I don't like and whose fanbase I dislike even more. People are fascinating, you just have to dig deeper to find those parts, and put forth effort to learn something from other people. Even those people you don't like.

celticninja 11y ago
but you can legitimately dislike someone, Kanye is incredibly conceited. I appreciate his music (well first 4 anyway) but his attitude sucks. Even at glastonbury he was stopping the performance to tell the crowd they were witnessing the greatest rock star ever. That just isnt true and if he actually believes it then he is making more of an idiot of himself. You dont decide you are the greatest rock star, the people do, and they discuss it for a long time before they come to that conclusion. You need to be compared to historical greats to even come close. The only person I see talking about Kanye in that way is Kanye. I should not need to wade through hours of footage to see him portrayed in a favourable light, if he acts a dick when he knows he is being watched/recorded/broadcast then it is a safe assumption to make that he is generally a dick.
bentcorner 11y ago
reddit seems to have a fascination with Kanye's "thug face". It's practically a meme where he's jovial and happy until the camera is put on him.
6stringmerc 11y ago

thearn4 11y ago

I've been on reddit for a few years, but never really took in how toxic the community is until I started following this. I cannot for the life of me understand how seriously people take that site and the things that go on there. It's like middle school lunchroom politics.

emehrkay 11y ago
Maybe I'd be as invested if my Reddit check stopped coming in or it started to look funny after Ellen took over.

vonklaus 11y ago

I know you are trolling, but people legitimately are asking this question so I will respond. >I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset. >they're >they Reddit is 160 million people because it is a huge online community. Calling them children and referring to them as a contiguous unit of alike individuals is laughable. So there isn't a straight answer why some subset of 160 million people are angry but a lot of them are for various reasons. >I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired Brendan Eich was way more qualified to run Mozilla than Pao is to run reddit. He was really fucking good at his job and is one of the smartest engineers in tech. He couldn't effectively do his job and had to resign. It doesn't matter if the backlash was fair, it was impacting the company negatively. Pao is not the right person to run reddit, hasn't made great decisions, is followed by personal scandal and is generally detested by the community(which is reddits product). She has to step down whether you feel slighted about it or not.

nahiluhmot 11y ago
What makes you think parent is trolling?
- vonklaus 11y ago
  Calling people emotional children and upset kids is just flame inducing. Maybe that person wasn't actually trolling but it was obvious crafted to illicit an angry response.
  - dschulz 11y ago
    *elicit
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Even where trolling is highly probable, "assume good faith" is generally a better tactic.
psychometry 11y ago
Don't you think you're being a bit premature in your assessment of Pao? She's an interim CEO who's been on the job mere months. Shutting down the subreddits she did needed to happen in order for reddit to be viable long-term. This latest issue is just about disaffected male teenagers looking for a reason to get mad at the new female CEO. It's so transparent and so pathetic.

ryanSrich 11y ago

Wow. I really didn't expect this type of shill comment on HN. I mean, I know YC has a vested interest in Reddit but this comment is just awful. Perhaps you should look into what real issues exist within Reddit before saying everyone who doesn't think favorable of EP is an angry "child".

celticninja 11y ago

>They have no real reason to dislike her. I dont think that is true. I have used reddit for quite some time, probably since 2006. I have no personal animosity toward her however I dont think she is the right leader for reddit. And I say that as a user, not an owner, shareholder, employee etc. My reasons are because I like they way the old reddit operated. The reason that I say that is because when I started using reddit the free speech ethic was proudly trumpeted. This was around the time of the DeCSS key event that started the downfall of Digg. Even up to as recently as 2012 Yishan Wong was reaffirming reddits commitment as a free speech platform. This was around the time of the r/jailbait takedown. But really that was the beginning of the end, r/jailbait was shut down because of illegal content being posted. I never saw definitive proof of that and I dont think any was offered. This was about the time that there was media interest in reddit (and to be fair r/jailabit was one of the more embarassing links that could and did show up on a google search for reddit). So it went and with it the start of a slippery slope of censorship began. After r/jailabit (which the majority of users agreed with) there was the fappening, again a lot of users agreed, but all these agreeable users were relatively new, they were here for cat pictures and memes. They didnt care about reddit as a free speech platform because their interests were not affected. Then we arrive at r/fatpeoplehate being banned. This went because of 'harassment'. Now we are at a stage where reddit is going to be kept clean and media friendly. It is not a free speech site (and I dont need to hear about free speech does not have to be protected by a businesss, i know that) even though it started off like that and it attracted a lot of users like that and those users built the communities that make reddit thrive. I dont post that often anymore, i very rarely submit content anymore, I am not as attached to my accounts as I used to be. I am looking for alternatives because the site has changed so much (and so has the userbase) that the content it now has is no longer as relevant as it once was and this is only going to continue under the current leadership, and once a certain point is passed there is no getting it back. If she went now it may be retrieveable, if she lasts another 6-12 months in her position then it may not be.

x0x0 11y ago
You're making this far too personal. Reddit is and was a shitty business; afaik, they lost money every year at least through 2012 (Yishan released not raw numbers but a graph showing expenses > revenue). Reddit has to change: at some point, they will either make money, become a billionaire's hobby or vanish. That's completely separate from the fact that certain people were happy to host jailbait and stolen celebrity titty pics and others are ashamed to be associated with people who do and/or support the former. Ellen has little do with any of the above except her current remit to make reddit into a functioning -- that is, profitable -- business. But any ceo will have that task.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

serve_yay 11y ago

If they're the problem, why is she apologizing to them for doing wrong by them? Why is a supposedly community-based website run by someone the community hates? You don't have to love reddit's community to smell a rat here. It's a complete shitshow.

psychometry 11y ago
She's apologizing for the firing, not her existence. Reddit would seem to prefer having her apologize for an irrelevant lawsuit and then resign because the lawsuit conflicts with the personal beliefs of an ever-growing contingent of bitter, young males.

celticninja 11y ago

The community is what you make it and who you enagage with. You see a shit community because you probably dont get involved in anything other than the default subreddits. You read the r/funny comments and see LCD comments for karma, that is a shit part of reddit I agree, but it is just a part of reddit it doesnt represent the whole community. The reddit community just gets cherry picked depending on the view you want to put across. 'Bad Guys' - find an appropriate reddit, e.g. r/picsofdeadkids, or r/hangniggers or just go to r/SRS and choose a topic, sexism, racism etc, choose a particualarly vile comment from a single user and then say look this is representative of reddit, what a hive of scum and villainy. 'Good Guys' - go to r/randomactsofkindness or r/randomactsofpizza, or any local subreddit like r/oregon and find a heart warming story of a user sending another user a new laptop when theirs was stolen right before finals, or turning up with money for a hotel when a guy and his kid get stuck in a new city at night after a football game, or any of a hundred other amazing things that people do for one another just because they are a user of the same site. Generalising like you have and saying you cant even get an answer about why they are upset is evidently trolling or laziness on your behalf as anyone with 10 minutes could find out the reasons behind the dislike of Pao just by reading the r/announcements and the user comments that go along with them.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

arfliw 11y ago

With regard to Victoria, she ran the AMA's and was very popular with redditors. Think of it like a sports team cutting a really popular player, without offering an explanation. The fanbase would be really unhappy about that. And this is what reddit does when it's unhappy about something. The Ellen Pao stuff is complicated, she does have some fault for being the one who made unpopular decisions and the way she managed the process (particularly extremely poor communication) but in general I agree that she gets way too much criticism from the community. She's very unpopular for a bunch of things that are not actually her fault (like people who incorrectly think she censors reddit).

tripzilch 11y ago

> a bunch of upset kids with some "authority" in the form of votes or moderation. In all fairness, a lot of their users are probably kids. Who are upset.