
Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a Line? (2015) - apsec112
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/sunday-review/did-reddit-boss-coverage-cross-a-line-ellen-pao.html
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snowwrestler
Knowing what we know now, I'd say the sexism angle holds up. Pao was treated
viciously during a short tenure during which she didn't do very much. She was
blamed for problems that predated her, like mod support and relations, which
had been going sour for years. She was blamed for things she didn't do, like
firing Victoria (done by Ohanian). She was blamed for relatively mild and
obvious moves to prevent abusive content on the site.

Steve Huffman was greeted as a savior when he replaced Pao. But he has been
far more aggressive in curbing nasty content, and done nasty things himself,
like secretly editing other users's posts directly in the database. And yet,
he is still CEO. And people don't post nasty and abusive things all day about
his looks, his sex life, etc.

The Ellen Pao tenure was not the Reddit community's finest hour.

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bsder
Ellen Pao is not a particularly good icon if you wish to discuss sexism.

She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit over a relationship that she agreed was
consensual. Once you decide to start sleeping with coworkers, you're pretty
much sunk in a sexual harassment lawsuit irrespective of whether you are male,
female, defending or prosecuting.

~~~
snowwrestler
Contrary to what you might think, women do not need to comport with your ideas
of how they should conduct their personal relationships, in order to expect
fair and professional treatment in the workplace and the world in general.

You probably think you're making some kind of point that sexism wasn't an
issue in how Pao was treated--when actually you're providing a good example of
it.

~~~
stagbeetle
His comment was specifically addressing all genders.

Irrespective, sleeping with coworkers is not a smart choice for anyone and the
issue supersedes womens' right to "conduct their personal relationships."

~~~
snowwrestler
It's honestly none of your business who she sleeps with.

And what you're implying--that because of a personal issue in her past, it was
ok to harass her out the door at Reddit--is offensive and a classic tactic
against women in the workplace.

How many coworkers has Huffman slept with during his career? You don't know,
because it never comes up, because he's a white guy. But we know that in his
actual job as CEO as Reddit, he has abused users' trust in the system for his
own benefit; but apparently Pao is still a worse villain. The double standard
stands intact.

~~~
stagbeetle
This is beyond Pao, recognize that.

People may have sexual-liberty, just as they may have the freedom of speech.
But, freedom from consequences is not guaranteed under these liberties.

If you sleep with the boss (man or woman) or a co-worker (man or woman) you
are putting team dynamics in jeopardy. Likewise, if you openly bash your place
of employment and revel in hate speech, you are putting the company's image in
jeopardy.

I'm not fond of the SJW rhetoric, but I will acknowledge it when it contains
rational arguments. Using the guise of liberty to mask irresponsibility is not
a rational or useful argument.

~~~
justbaker
Couldn't agree with this more

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taneq
From everything I read about it, Pao was hired (knowingly or not) as a
scapegoat. Reddit had started to get a bad rap in the media due to certain
sections of the community (eg. /r/fatpeoplehate, various racist subreddits)
and had been told by investors that they had to clean up their image. So they
hired Pao, had her make the changes (banning a few obnoxious subs, updating
site code of conduct), and then fired her (without rolling back the changes)
to appease the more vocal members of the community.

~~~
dukeluke
Catering to the lowest common denominator is a large reason why the quality of
news networks have tanked in the last decade. Why wouldn't the same drop in
quality occur with Reddit?

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apsec112
Hey, OP here. I don't really care about Pao, but posted this again because of
the details it provides on how the NYT operates in general. In particular,
there's this paragraph:

"I often hear from readers that they would prefer a straight, neutral
treatment — just the facts. But The Times has moved away from that, reflecting
editors’ reasonable belief that the basics can be found in many news outlets,
every minute of the day. They want to provide “value-added” coverage."

If there was a good post analyzing this, with lots of links to primary
sources, without getting bogged down in other distractions, I would've posted
that instead. But I unfortunately haven't seen one yet.

~~~
jessriedel
Yes, this frank description of NYTimes' journalistic philosophy is vastly more
important than the Pao controversy.

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Steeeve
Personally, I'm of the opinion that their coverage did cross a line.

The coverage of Pao's ouster in general crossed all kinds of lines.

We now know that most of the public ill-will towards her was completely
unfounded. It's the nature of internet media in general. Everybody wants to be
first. Being correct and balanced are nice-to-haves that I'm not sure any
media outlet cares about anymore. This goes for online and other media. Even
journals target studies with eye catching headlines.

This all goes to problems with advertising revenue. Page views and clicks
generate revenue almost blindly. End users are engaging not based on trust or
value, but based on common themes. It's not sustainable, and if it is
sustainable it's not right.

The same goes for VC money. I suppose _most_ investment money has been forever
broken because they target generic measurable milestones and not quality or
long term sustainability which is difficult to truly analyze. I suppose that's
why most big silicon valley companies are housed in the shells of former big
silicon valley companies. I'm stereotyping here, and yc could very well be
much different, but this is definitely an impression that I have. I've never
gone after VC money myself, so I could be off base by a long shot.

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guelo
No idea why this is being upvoted here now, but it is a reminder of all the
internet culture wars that I think had a big effect on the lead up to Trump's
victory. Agree or not it is an amazing revolution. The young male gamer
culture won.

~~~
ma2rten
I thought Trump voters skewed older.

~~~
akhilcacharya
They do, but he has a very vocal base among young people (much more vocal than
young people for Clinton).

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arjie
There's a community of screaming angry children (not an insult, I mean literal
teenagers and younger) who've got some sort of persecution complex and
complain often about "censorship". Almost uniformly, the work of these people
is not useful to anyone but them. And it is only useful to them in a sort of
self gratifying perpetuation of their beliefs coupled with outrage.

If you're an individual, I would advise steering clear of these groups. It's
not productive to be a member.

I think it's today's variant of the BSD v GPL, or Linux v Microsoft flame
wars. It's an addictive thing to participate in. You have a team and you
strongly present membership and identity.

It's less about the principles behind it and more about which principles you
can bring to serve your identity as part of the group membership.

For an individual, this is a mental trap. You expend a great deal of effort on
identification and none on being better. It's not worth it.

I think the Ellen Pao thing was one of these identity rites. She was the
opposite, and things others could be forgiven for would be heinous crimes if
she'd done them.

~~~
dukeluke
An us-vs-them mentality definitely amplified the outrage, but it began for
legitimate purposes. Reddit really was a bastion of free speech in its early
days, which was fantastic because people with thoughts that didn't align with
the PC culture could find a place they liked. The community was afraid the
changes implemented by Pao would be a slippery slope to conforming to the
mainstream PC culture and reacted accordingly. And looking at how Reddit has
changed in the last few years, I would say those fears were not unfounded in
the least.

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sloanesturz
My favorite part is the section at the bottom that says,

> A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 19, 2015, on Page SR9 of
> the New York edition with the headline: Did Reddit Boss Coverage Cross a
> Line?

I wonder if the Times even modified this Op-Ed between print and web!

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frik
That's some automatically generated text footer, it's common on NYT.

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impossiblegame
This is news again why?

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dredmorbius
Without questioning the appropriateness of the story, I would be interested in
hearing from OP what prompted the re-posting.

HN's front page is as HN's front page does....

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apsec112
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694142)

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks.

