
The New Reddit C.E.O.’s Many Challenges - kanamekun
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/the-new-reddit-ceos-many-challenges/
======
asb
Amazingly, Yishan Wong (previous CEO of Reddit) has commented about the firing
of Victoria (which was one of the things added fire to the backlash against
Ellen Pao), claiming it was Alexis who made the decision to fire her
[https://np.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0th...](https://np.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0thing_says_he_was_responsible_for_the_change/ct1fsoi?context=3)

~~~
RockyMcNuts
He also posted this little bit of bridge-burning -

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/ct0ho6z?context=3)

~~~
deelowe
It's not secret there was tremendous pressure to get from underneath Conde
Nast. There had to be some leverage to make them decide to just hand over the
keys to the kingdom like that.

I've been curious ever since it happened what the specific details of the deal
were.

~~~
x0x0
what leverage did they really need? Reddit never made any profit and was
clearly not on the path to making any. Therefore, conde nast might as well
take a flyer in the hopes of turning a loss-making asset into a revenue-making
asset.

~~~
deelowe
My point was simply that the details of the conde nast deal weren't shared
afaik. You don't just cut and run from a company valued at >$200m (at the
time) even if it's currently in the red.

------
exstudent2
I wonder if he'll reverse the "no salary negotiation" rule that Pao put in
place. If they're struggling to attract talent as this article suggests, it
seems like a wise move.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I wonder if they'll allow remote employees again.

~~~
exstudent2
Indeed. The decision to make everyone relocate seems like it was the beginning
of a lot of internal strife including Yishan leaving and Pao replacing him.

I don't work for Reddit but mandatory centralization of the workforce __seems
__like it goes against the product and company ethos.

------
themeek
During his AMA I asked clarifying questions that never got answered about
Reddit's policies about federal programs and partnerships regarding the
management of political discussion attributed to foreign actors - and whether
like other social media sites - foreign political content including propaganda
are considered by Reddit to be 'spam' and 'trolling' and therefore subject to
Reddit's comment deletion and shadowbanning capabilities.

I unfortunately did not see a reply. It's my understanding that many of these
executives of social media websites face the challenge of negotiating what the
community wants and the curation requests and preferences of partners - both
governmental, 'civil society' and business customers and investors.

~~~
theseatoms
Do we have any evidence around the frequency and/or magnitude of US federal
government pressure/censorship tactics towards social media sites?

I don't doubt that it happens, but I would expect much more noise about this
if it was truly widespread.

~~~
themeek
We do but it's unfortunately not widely covered.

The Snowden document released on the strategic objectives - the high level
goals driving all NSA technology - included strategic communication, which we
know from DoD investment in the last two presidents has increasingly been
focused toward social media (with some programs like SMISC and MINERVA as
public research instanciations of the policy).

We know quite a bit about the US attempted partnerships with Twitter
(historically Twitter has refused partnership but now is more congenial) from
FOIA documents and news sources and that the US uses sockpuppets in many
places, including Twitter for its own propaganda purposes worldwide. We know
that the Facebook studies on nudging voting behavior and emotions had ties to
these programs as well.

We know that threat intelligence systems include patterns to block certain
URLs and content that is foreign controlled propaganda - notably of Russian
origin and that there are people in the government full time on tracking
Salafist ideas online for both blocking when they reach American audiences and
engagement of various sorts overseas.

We know that there is a firewall between the State Department and DoD when it
comes to the programs (State Department has the overt programs for the most
part and the DoD the covert). We know a few things from various leaks about
partnerships (HB Gary Federal, etc) with private sector intelligence firms.

We also have reports from the US and journalists about some of the techniques
of adversary nations and we have some details especially about GCHQs JTRIG
capabilities and some of the areas the NSA and GCHQ have worked in due to
Snowden document. We have a couple of other examples - things like ZunZuneo -
that some social media platforms are fronts for various countries rather than
merely partners.

We also know some things about the law in the United States for messaging:
foreign messaging the US has pretty much no limitations. While it will censor
American political speech (al-Alwaki's youtube videos, etc) for the most part
it can justify minimal amounts of this and focuses on foreign speech and
foreign aimed influence.

It is legal in the United States to message Americans under wartime powers,
states of emergency (Occupy and Ferguson were both considered states of
emergency), and for the purposes of getting domestic support for overseas
military operations. The Smith-Mundt Act was recently revised to remove the
limitation on the US government to prevent foreign-aimed propaganda from being
incidentally consumed by Americans (the internet makes this hard) but it's
unfortunate that this happens quite a lot (why they had to make the revision)
and that it has, in the past, been purposefully abused.

We also know some things about historical partnerships, but most of that has
to do with 'old media' and it's hard to draw real policy and technical
implications from programs that existed a generation ago. The things we know
about those partnerships today (partnerships with media executives, leaked
editing of journalism coverage) that look like the old stuff don't focus on
social media so much - the social media programs are a relatively new
initiative.

~~~
theseatoms
Thanks for your thoughtful response.

I had not heard of ZunZuneo.

Link for the curious:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZunZuneo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZunZuneo)

(warning: article is poorly written)

~~~
themeek
Journalism:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-
twitte...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-
zunzuneo-stir-unrest)

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-secretly-created-cuban-
twi...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-secretly-created-cuban-twitter-stir-
unrest)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-
effort-t...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-to-
undermine-cuban-government-with-fake-twitter-another-anti-castro-
failure/2014/04/03/c0142cc0-bb75-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html)

There's a bunch of programs like these. CANVAS for example works with the US
government to stir dissent in VZ. Similar to how the US then uses crackdowns
on its clandestine programs as illustrations of a corrupt VZ government when
the Cuban government cracked down on phones due to US messaging programs (both
to SMS and through apps like ZunZuneo) it was criticized by the US government
for cracking down on civil rights. This is also similar to (project UNITER)
activity by the CIA in organizing the Euromaiden protests and for shell media
companies in Ukraine, and the following cry about the crackdown on 'civil
society' there.

These things are incredibly smart, of course, and I'm glad our government has
these capabilities and is so good at it. But there's also a level at which
some debates need to be had and while specific programs and details hurt
national security a general conversation among the people on what sorts of
tactics they approve of and what boundaries should be in place in this murky
area of law should be a good thing.

------
studentrob
This article is a day or two old.

More recent news is, this NYT author himself has yet to comment on why his
article about Pao's resignation was retitled and rewritten "from fact to
opinion", as Altman mentioned in a recent tweet.

