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I think this was the right thing to do from a PR perspective. Having Steve back as the new CEO will definitely be good for the community. I also applaud Reddit

• Flammy 11y ago
  Link to full statement: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_old_team_at_reddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_ol... It is a good read.
• ForEnglandJames 11y ago
  >> As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen So what. She got better than she deserved.
• oldmanjay 11y ago
  I'm curious about a few things, like just how many of the people on reddit making the noise are actually literally children. Probably quite a lot!
• revelation 11y ago
  You applaud them on a PR strategy that is akin to dictatorships all over the world denouncing opposition as "terrorists" and criminals? The community is not a coherent block. To give the impression that the criticism stems from an organized group of people that applaud and tolerate death threats is the equivalent of binding it to a strawman and lighting it on fire with gasoline.
  • oldmanjay 11y ago
    The notion of group responsibility for individual actions is insidious, because it's too easy to mount a circular-logic based offense and also because it leads to humanity's favorite game, us v. them.
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
      Humans aren't really individuals, though they labor under the illusion of such. They're weak hiveminds. Individuals, if they exist at all, are rare and want nothing to do with the rest of you. When foreign hiveminds come into contact, one attempts to absorb the other, and failing that, to destroy the other. Memes are highly infectious, and so it's often important to police memes to make sure no foreign ones disrupt the hivemind's self. One or another hivemind sent off a few spurious signals, and a few highly excited human units acted on those. The hiveminds in question don't feel responsible because they didn't intend to send those signals (or want to pretend they didn't).
      • oldmanjay 11y ago
        That's fairly cynical, and I don't have that experience at all, and I do not agree with you, and I do not know of any evidence backing a single one of your statements.
    • nhf 11y ago
      This wasn't an accusation of group responsibility. In fact, they specifically state in their announcement that > Ellen asked me to point out that the sweeping majority of redditors didn’t do this, and many were incredibly supportive. Although the incredible power of the Internet is the amplification of voices, unfortunately sometimes those voices are hateful. Like any popular site, Reddit attracts everything from enlightened discussions to 4chan-level casual trolls (and worse). Pointing out the issues with threats and indicating that the community could be better without individuals who would publicly threaten the life of another person seems very reasonable to me.
      • 11y ago
• Patrick_Devine 11y ago
  As an occasional user of reddit, this whole ordeal has confirmed the reason why I prefer not to hang out in its forums. I have no idea whether Ellen was a capable CEO, but the vitriol which I kept seeing peripherally (through other news articles and here on HN) was absolutely appalling.
  • DennisP 11y ago
    It depends on the subreddits. With my subscriptions I barely noticed the whole thing.
    • ljk 11y ago
      Only sub'd in smaller subreddits; didn't know everything was happening until I saw it on hn
    • colinbartlett 11y ago
      I've been a heavy reddit user for 8 years and I did not know about this until I read about it in the New York Times. It's really a small subset of the reddits that were touched by the entire ordeal.
      • city41 11y ago
        It completely and totally dominated /r/all for days, even weeks. /r/all is an aggregate of the most popular posts for the entire site, so I disagree only a small subset were affected. Maybe in number of subreddits, but the subreddits that were affected are absolutely gigantic.
        • danielweber 11y ago
          Most people are completely unaware of /r/all
          • colinbartlett 11y ago
            Certainly not unaware just definitely not interested.
• nawitus 11y ago
  Did the "community" make death threats? I didn't see any, and I don't think the average redditor would approve those. There will be death threats in almost any large-scale, heated discussion. The typical upvoted comments actually consisted of valid criticism against Pao and reddit's management.
  • eli 11y ago
    I didn't really follow this subject, but I saw a lot of crude and frankly pretty racist joke images voted up to the front page.
    • mistermann 11y ago
      I didn't see any racism, unless you consider characterizing her as communist dictator Mao Zedong to be racism?
  • mwfunk 11y ago
    "There will be death threats in almost any large-scale, heated discussion." Dude, seriously. And I'm pretty sure "dude" is appropriate here: no, no there will not be death threats in any large scale discussion. Not among adults at least. Little kids fight all the time but when they grow up that's called "assault and battery". Maybe in your world little kids threaten to kill each other over the Internet all the time, but when they grow up that's called a "death threat". Maybe the problem here is that society has more tolerance for that sh*t in children, which I suppose can cause some confusion when they start interacting with the Real World.
    • nawitus 11y ago
      So there will not be, but there was? It's my estimation that if there are hundreds of thousands of anonymous or pseudonymous discussion comments it's very likely that a few individuals will a make death threat (which are likely not intended to be taken seriously). My point is that stating that death threats were made is not particularly interesting, as that's not a rare occurrence when we're talking about very large number of comments by very large number of people, some of which are anonymous or pseudonymous. "Dude, seriously. And I'm pretty sure "dude" is appropriate here:" Could you refrain from sexist comments like that?
• stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS You mean this? > [1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned. All that opposition - strong enough to convince "Chairman Pao" to resign - reduced to death threats? All those arbitrary bans written off as a just punishment for criminal behavior? Something tells me that we haven't seen the last of "safe space" Reddit.
  • justizin 11y ago
    Calling her "Chairman Pao" is racist, but moreso, reductive.
    • spinlock 11y ago
      that's a stretch. if the intent is to create a sarcastic nick-name that compares the ceo to a dictator, "chairman pao" is going to be a front-runner not because pao and mao are both chinese but because pao and mao are only 1 letter different from each other.
      • stefantalpalaru 11y ago
        You can't really reason with people once they labeled something as "racist". Convincing them that they are wrong would imply that they can't differentiate between what's racist and what's not and that's something that would affect their core beliefs.
      • jrs99 11y ago
        Regardless of the intention, they ARE both chinese. So is it really a stretch to see a racist element to this nick name? It is racist by default. I'm not saying that it is a greatly offensive nickname or even unfunny, but for someone to call it racist is not at all a stretch.
        • oldmanjay 11y ago
          Is it racist to acknowledge that Ellen Pao is of Chinese ancestry? I don't get how but I don't get a lot of the modern sensitivities.
• buckbova 11y ago
  > The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people even if there is Internet between you. That is humanity. People are narcissistic assholes. If the average person wasn't scared of what would happen or how they're perceived they'd punch you right in the face for looking in their direction. That's what internet anonymity does. Brings out people's true essence. You see it with road rage too. The protection of the vehicle and the quick flight make giving the finger in response to a reasonable mishap an easy answer. A "FUCK YOU" for accidentally veering into your lane. Sound reasonable? Yeah there's a few Mother Teresas out there, but most of them are self righteous a-holes too. What a world.
  • throwaway999666 11y ago
    Humanity is also full of cynical assholes.
    • buckbova 11y ago
      touché
  • Nadya 11y ago
    Mother Teresa was a rather terrible person. She saw human suffering as a way to be closer to God and squirreled donations to her clinics away for personal bank accounts of her and her higher-class/political goons. She defended some rather evil characters and even kept a $1.25 million dollars donated to her from stolen money. When asked to return it, she simply ignored the request.
  • andrepd 11y ago
    "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." -- Oscar Wilde Relevant as always.
  • InclinedPlane 11y ago
    > That is humanity. People are narcissistic assholes. If the average person wasn't scared of what would happen or how they're perceived they'd punch you right in the face for looking in their direction. I disagree. Some people: yes. Average person: I don't know, I suspect probably not. I've met a lot of people from different parts of the US, Canada, and around the world. A great many of them have exhibited a tendency towards genuine empathy. That too is human nature, it's not all narcissism and self-interest.
• Nadya 11y ago
  >I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS Anything less doesn't get heard - or it gets ignored. A certain pirate group that asked the U.N for help, was ignored, and resorted to boarding ships and capturing prisoners comes to mind. I've known very few people who cared to have Pao as CEO since her taking the position. Anyone who gave attention to Reddit Corporate disliked her being in that position and felt her politics would get in the way (and they did). The only people who seemed to like her in that seat were those with the same ideological and political leanings as her (not a big surprise there). [0] The fact people had to get "up in arms" and make a huge fuss about her to get her out of the position shows action should have been taken sooner, rather than later. But nobody pays attention to the quiet protests. They only give notice to the extreme. Yes - some of the comments against her were extreme, unnecessary, and irrelevant to her position and the problems surrounding her. I saw death/rape threats, totally uncalled for. Anything less was ignored. [0] And her Karma tells the story. It's almost always been negative. https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png
• austenallred 11y ago
  > I think this was the right thing to do from a PR perspective. I think this was the right thing to do from a product perspective. Pao didn't really know how to use the site, and didn't ever particularly like the users. I don't know if Huffman likes the users, but one would assume that he would at least know how to use the site he helped build :)
  • mynameisvlad 11y ago
    Um, proof? The fact that she's been actually active on the site under her own account shows that clearly she knows how to use the site, so that argument alone is moot. I don't know how you can prove she didn't like the users unless she straight up said that.
    • austenallred 11y ago
      https://np.reddit.com/r/FaithInHumanity/comments/39ee4c/charlie/ https://np.reddit.com/r/FaithInHumanity/comments/39ee4c/char... She tried to share a link to a private message. That's the equivalent of my mom emailing me and saying, "Here's the picture - c:\\user\desktop\pic.jpg" - it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the site works. Then everyone who replied was shadowbanned and every post was deleted. So no, she literally didn't know how to use the site.
      • yen223 11y ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_old_team_at_reddit/csz2lzu https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_ol... The new CEO doesn't know how to make lists. Is he going to catch shit for it?
        • austenallred 11y ago
          He should
          • vehementi 11y ago
• georgemcbay 11y ago
  I personally think the criticism directed her way was warranted (as was that directed at Alexis, especially after his first responses), though I definitely don't think it should have taken the form it sometimes did (misogynist, racist, overly personal, overly reactive, etc). I think the pseudo-anonymity of the Internet (though it has many positive aspects in other contexts) is wreaking havoc on our ability to debate some topics because you wind up with a situation where many people get upset about a legitimate grievance and some overly troll-y subset of those people goes overboard with their backlash and then the whole issue ends up in this very unfortunately binary "us versus them" where rational but legitimately upset people get painted with the same brush as the vocal minority of troll-y jerkwads (or alternately, they have to just excuse themselves from the debate to avoid being painted with that brush). eg. "Gamergate" (there is an inescapable core truth to the fact that game journalism is broken, perhaps irreparably so, that got completely lost in all of the personal-level misogynistic bullshit) and this reddit situation where the community had every right to be upset at the recent moves they have been making (though to reiterate, I think some forms of the backlash were, as reddit's announcement stated, sickening).
• dominotw 11y ago
  When will these people stop acting like our moral superiors. smh.
• rorykoehler 11y ago
  The childish and aggressive level of communication on Reddit led me to discover Hacker News while in search of quality and informed discussion. Admittedly I also use Reddit but more and more it has become a curiosity to see how people act when they think no one will know it's them. Occasionally I also engage in rewarding exchanges there but the few loud, brash and opinionated (but not well informed) users in the subreddits I frequent do lower my level of engagement and enjoyment considerably.
  • nindalf 11y ago
    I think the subreddit system is a good way of categorising content and more importantly, behaviour. People are talking a lot about misogyny but its possible to avoid all the drama if you simply subscribe to smaller, more interesting, well moderated subs. I kept up with my favourite books, video games and other interests like history without being interrupted by Pao hate. I think HN is great too. The knowledge of some of the commenters here can be very educational.
    • rorykoehler 11y ago
      Yes. The smaller subreddits that make up most of my subscriptions are fine (programming languages etc) but the larger ones have a very high noise to signal ratio.
• pnathan 11y ago
  There was a lot of evil stuff spewing about relating to Ms. Pao. It was pretty sad, and those people should feel ashamed of saying those things about anyone. On the other hand, I don't think that she did a very good job managing the crisis (the first one caused by banning certain douchy subreddits, and the second one caused by the firing), which is one thing a CEO needs to be able to do.
  • fredkbloggs 11y ago
    Yeah, exactly. Also, firing someone without some kind of plan for redistributing her duties is a Management 101 no-no. Ellen Pao failed as CEO of Reddit. That has nothing to do with the 1% or whatever of Reddit users who are racists and/or misogynists. That's just the real world; you have to get past the obnoxious idiots and focus on what matters. The reason Ms. Pao was fired (let's be honest) is that she failed to make Reddit more profitable, attractive to users, and generally awesome. Not because she's a woman, not because there are people out there who don't want to see women succeed. Make money and all is forgiven. Pissing off large, meaningful chunks of your user base is not conducive to making money.
    • vehementi 11y ago
      Nevermind misogyny etc., you're pointing to two incidents of unknown magnitude (because you lack the data internal to the company) among an unknown number of other things she's handled and you claim she's failed as a CEO? That is ridiculously uninformed.
      • brazzledazzle 11y ago
        Is disputing her failure a serious position? Regardless of whether or not they are the community reddit wants the company angered its moderators enough to trigger something that ended up being in the news and very visible even to those that use reddit without ever viewing comments.
      • albinofrenchy 11y ago
        Just because you don't have internal proprietary data doesn't mean you cant have a rational opinion on the matter. That is a ridiculous standard. The Victoria thing was a monumental cluster fuck in one of the most outward facing facets of the company.
• mc32 11y ago
  I don't know if she was a bad leader or not. My big concern is this populist approach to firing people. Enough people don't like a company officer? Cobble a "movement" and generate enough controversy to force them to step down. I think unless they egregiously violate company policy or violate the law or do something which would bring damage to a company it should be up to the company to direct the fate of an officer... Not popular sentiment. Maybe she deserved to be fired, maybe she was a terrible officer. Let the company make that decision. I dont like tho mob rule aspect to her stepping down.
  • stefantalpalaru 11y ago
    If you live by the public opinion, you die by the public opinion.
    • brazzledazzle 11y ago
      That's the unfortunate reality of being a leader. It would be nice if it weren't so but the world is very far from nice.
      • Jochim 11y ago
        Consequences for your actions are something only non-leaders should have to deal with...
  • multinglets 11y ago
    If she weren't a woman, I would be tempted to say it's almost . . . It's almost like she just sucked at her job and the public backlash and getting fired were both predictable consequences of that fact.
    • mc32 11y ago
      Let's say she sucked at her job. Let the org fire her. These actions were the result of thought that they needed to heed public opinion. As if officers need to walk on eggshells. What should matter ate results rather than dictated by the winds of public opinion. I wish the board, management, etc. in these situations would who resolve and say, no, sorry, this is our choice, we stand by it. But no, we see them capitulate to public opinion. Sometimes that opinion does coincide with"the right thing to do" but let the company execute the right thing. Don't let the mob become your upper management.
• mirimir 11y ago
  Redit isn't a community. It's a bunch of communities. Most of them, I more or less dislike, for various overlapping sets of reasons. But I support freedom of speech. Everyone is free to ignore whatever they dislike. Also, in such communities, strong anonymity is prudent. It does protect griefers from consequences, I admit. But more importantly, it protects all users from meatspace risks. Edit: This is an old discussion. Especially if one replaces "Redit" with "Usenet".
• cLeEOGPw 11y ago
  It will only be good if he unban the banned subreddits. If he leaves them banned it means that they did unpopular changes, laid blame on one person, remove the person but leave the changes.