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This was my main takeaway from the article. Ellen's changes to hate speech rules caused some backlash, but it sounds like she had nothing to do with Victoria's

by xd1936 11y ago

This was my main takeaway from the article. Ellen's changes to hate speech rules caused some backlash, but it sounds like she had nothing to do with Victoria's firing.

Someone1234 11y ago
> Ellen's changes to hate speech rules caused some backlash What changes to "hate speech rules?" Reddit still allows hate speech. What they curtailed were subreddits who existed primarily to harass people both on and off the site (e.g. other Reddit users, YouTubers, game streamers, people with public Facebook profiles, random members of the public, the entire Imgur staff, several Reddit admins, you name it). That's why whenever this topic gets brought up people link to e.g. racist subreddits which still exist today, and then ask "well, why was XYZ banned, if those aren't?!" while entirely ignoring the fact that the banned subs were banned for HARASSMENT, not for having controversial opinions. Subs still exist with the same controversial opinions as those who got banned. The difference is that the mods in the ones which survived actively follow Reddit's rules and don't harass innocent people. The mods on the banned ones were actively involved in the harassment and frankly should have been banned.
- xd1936 11y ago
  What changes to hate speech rules? These changes: https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/ https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removi... I agree, they should have and should continue to be banned. It still caused controversy. Yes, their reasoning is that these subs have users that leave their cesspools and harass other people.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    > What changes to hate speech rules? These changes You linked to a page titled: "Removing harassing subreddits" that talks about harassment and doesn't contain the term "hate speech." Can you clarify why you think this has anything to do with hate speech rather than harassment?
smacktoward 11y ago
On the other hand, the CEO of a company should at least be vaguely aware of personnel changes that would affect strategic parts of their business. And AMAs are definitely strategic to Reddit. The question then becomes whether Pao didn't know about it because she wasn't paying attention to her business, or because Ohanian and/or other parties deliberately hid the information from her until after the proverbial stuff had hit the fan. I'd consider the latter a fireable offense, but YMMV.
- tptacek 11y ago
  How do you know she didn't know about it? And what level of involvement do you expect a CEO to have in personnel decisions of random departments? You think Tim Cook hears about even 1% of the people Apple fires, or that Craig Federighi can't fire a senior manager directly below him on the org chart? From what's been said publicly by principals in the story, we know that Ohanian had taken the AMA section into his personal portfolio. By the way: that by itself is weird: the chairman doesn't usually have an operational role in the company, among other reasons because it's a conflict of interest. Regardless of who he was, he had ownership of the department Victoria Taylor worked in. In most well-managed companies, that makes hire/fire his prerogative, and coordination of personnel changes his responsibility. When people screw hire/fire up and cause disruption, the CEO normally fires or demotes them, and gets extra careful about future promotions and delegations to keep there from being a pattern of poor decisions about delegation. Here, neither thing was allowed to happen: Ohanian is effectively unfireable, and Pao wasn't given a chance to not delegate more stuff to him.
  - learc83 11y ago
    >You think Tim Cook hears about even 1% of the people Apple fires, or that Craig Federighi can't fire a senior manager directly below him on the org chart? I'm sure that she doesn't have to approve every dismissal, but there's a pretty big difference between Apple and Reddit. Last I heard Reddit only has a few dozen employees. I'd expect the CEO to know most of them by name.
    - 11y ago

by xd1936 11y ago

This was my main takeaway from the article. Ellen's changes to hate speech rules caused some backlash, but it sounds like she had nothing to do with Victoria's firing.

Someone1234 11y ago

> Ellen's changes to hate speech rules caused some backlash What changes to "hate speech rules?" Reddit still allows hate speech. What they curtailed were subreddits who existed primarily to harass people both on and off the site (e.g. other Reddit users, YouTubers, game streamers, people with public Facebook profiles, random members of the public, the entire Imgur staff, several Reddit admins, you name it). That's why whenever this topic gets brought up people link to e.g. racist subreddits which still exist today, and then ask "well, why was XYZ banned, if those aren't?!" while entirely ignoring the fact that the banned subs were banned for HARASSMENT, not for having controversial opinions. Subs still exist with the same controversial opinions as those who got banned. The difference is that the mods in the ones which survived actively follow Reddit's rules and don't harass innocent people. The mods on the banned ones were actively involved in the harassment and frankly should have been banned.

xd1936 11y ago
What changes to hate speech rules? These changes: https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/ https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removi... I agree, they should have and should continue to be banned. It still caused controversy. Yes, their reasoning is that these subs have users that leave their cesspools and harass other people.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > What changes to hate speech rules? These changes You linked to a page titled: "Removing harassing subreddits" that talks about harassment and doesn't contain the term "hate speech." Can you clarify why you think this has anything to do with hate speech rather than harassment?

smacktoward 11y ago

On the other hand, the CEO of a company should at least be vaguely aware of personnel changes that would affect strategic parts of their business. And AMAs are definitely strategic to Reddit. The question then becomes whether Pao didn't know about it because she wasn't paying attention to her business, or because Ohanian and/or other parties deliberately hid the information from her until after the proverbial stuff had hit the fan. I'd consider the latter a fireable offense, but YMMV.

tptacek 11y ago
How do you know she didn't know about it? And what level of involvement do you expect a CEO to have in personnel decisions of random departments? You think Tim Cook hears about even 1% of the people Apple fires, or that Craig Federighi can't fire a senior manager directly below him on the org chart? From what's been said publicly by principals in the story, we know that Ohanian had taken the AMA section into his personal portfolio. By the way: that by itself is weird: the chairman doesn't usually have an operational role in the company, among other reasons because it's a conflict of interest. Regardless of who he was, he had ownership of the department Victoria Taylor worked in. In most well-managed companies, that makes hire/fire his prerogative, and coordination of personnel changes his responsibility. When people screw hire/fire up and cause disruption, the CEO normally fires or demotes them, and gets extra careful about future promotions and delegations to keep there from being a pattern of poor decisions about delegation. Here, neither thing was allowed to happen: Ohanian is effectively unfireable, and Pao wasn't given a chance to not delegate more stuff to him.
- learc83 11y ago
  >You think Tim Cook hears about even 1% of the people Apple fires, or that Craig Federighi can't fire a senior manager directly below him on the org chart? I'm sure that she doesn't have to approve every dismissal, but there's a pretty big difference between Apple and Reddit. Last I heard Reddit only has a few dozen employees. I'd expect the CEO to know most of them by name.
  - 11y ago