
Reddit slammed by former CEO Ellen Pao for 'amplifying' racism and hate - pseudolus
https://www.cnet.com/news/reddit-slammed-by-former-ceo-ellen-pao-for-amplifying-racism-and-hate-nfl-nba/
======
haunter
Reddit has general problem with everything. For example yesterday the front
page and /r/all were both having an /r/bestof conspiracy theory post that the
police directly planting bricks near the protests to insitagate violence
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/gv4xds/umetamaoz_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/gv4xds/umetamaoz_provides_evidence_that_the_police_are/)

The general Reddit hivemimd is basically:

\- If you are not with us you are against us

\- Whatever doesn't fit my view on the world is a big part of some kind of
hidden agenda against the things I care about

That's the site. Also fueled by the downvote upvote system which makes
everything worse.

~~~
ornornor
It feels like if you’re using Reddit for politics and news you’re doing it
wrong. It’s a dumpster fire in that respect.

I still find Reddit has some relevance for more “niche” interests. For
instance bikewrench To help with anything bicycle maintenance related. Or
woodworking where there are many knowledgeable and friendly users.

If you’re blocking ads and not playing the Reddit gold game, you’re not really
giving Reddit any money. In an ideal world we’d get rid of Reddit altogether
but that’s already a step.

Wait until they disable old.reddit.com and restrict the api to their official
app only and they’ll lose all their users I reckon except the people arguing
about politics.

~~~
bzb3
It's always the same argument: "if you don't use Reddit the way .00001% of
their users do, you're using it wrong". Yeah, no.

~~~
ornornor
Well then I don’t know what to tell you. Enjoy your dumpster fire?
Parent'spoint was that Reddit is unusable. I’m bringing a counterpoint that
it’s ok if you stick to niche/specific subs and avoid the default subreddits
and politics/news. It’s my opinion. You may not agree with it.

~~~
bzb3
I didn't want to sound dismissive, but:

>It feels like if you’re using Reddit for politics and news you’re doing it
wrong. It’s a dumpster fire in that respect.

99.999% of Reddit users use it for that (just look at the front page). If you
invent a tool and when you start testing it you see an overwhelming amount of
the testers use it wrong, you can hardly blame the testers. The problem is
your tool.

~~~
majewsky
I see a lot of people wearing face masks on their mouth only, not covering the
nose as they should. Should we conclude that the current mask design is
broken?

------
caymanjim
Already deleted Twitter and Reddit accounts. Deleting Facebook as soon as I
gather alternate contact information for people. Hiding behind free speech
claims while profiting off of and actively promoting hate is unacceptable.
There are limits to free speech, and while I don't think it's the government's
place to legislate or regulate it, I'm not going to support any of these
companies any more.

Arguments about a commons, not talking sides, and freedom ring hollow. I don't
condone violence, but the kind of speech these sites allow and promote would
get you punched in the face at the very least, if you couldn't hide
anonymously behind a screen. People wouldn't speak the same way if they had to
face their audience in the real world. All these platforms (and others) hand a
megaphone to the worst of humanity. It's unacceptable. I'm done.

------
Y_Y
You have a website aimed at humanity in general, and it turns out that people
are interested in this kind of stuff. I think the corporate dream of having
all the "good, clean, fun" with none of the complicated not-on-brand stuff is
generally impossible. You have to take people as they are, whether or not you
find them "deplorable". Or just run a really niche website.

~~~
uniqueid
God himself did not invent the internet, the web, or social media websites.
There are actual design decisions that went into their design (eg:
[https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/](https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/)).
Humans, like you and me, made them, and continue to make them.

Many of those decisions were unfortunate in that they do not hold people
accountable when they should be (eg: sociopaths, criminals, psyops, etc) and
yet discourage good actors from interacting online (due to reputational
damage, persecution by mobs, occasional murder, privacy concerns, etc).

Humans do not behave like walking garbage _all of the time_ in the offline
world. They do on social media, because of naive design decisions that we
should probably change, if we want to survive as a species.

~~~
KONAir
Well then God should do something about Reddit.

~~~
bzb3
He made it absurdly slow, with a terrible redesign and forced all mobile users
to download the app. What else do you want?!

------
ramblerman
Reddit is a mess, on all sides. It's ok, in the quest for social justice, to
just go on witchhunts and post videos of anyone online.

I can't imagine the amount of unjust damage they have done by just randomnly
posting peoples photos and names online.

Take for example the "Karen" meme. Any suburbian mum who has a fit in a public
space is now called a "Karen", and it's fine to post their video online to
mock them and hopefully "get them fired".

A 5 minute mistake can cost you your career. That just doesn't seem like a
road to progress, or a better world imo. Chasing absolute morality without a
shred of empathy.

The website is the online personification of "Lord of the flies".

------
not_a_moth
The problem stems from interest groups using reddit as a political
battleground. This is overwhelmingly evident on election years. Even one of my
favorite subreddits of a popular non political podcaster in recent months has
been inundated with political accounts who do nothing but try to discredit and
bury viewpoints they don't like. Worldnews, news, politics are so incredibly
one-sided it feels orwellian and creeps me out.

That's the sad state of reddit today from a user of 10+ years.

------
ablqp
This is the same Pao who talked about "incels".

And that is the problem in a nutshell. The people who portray themselves as
good (often for monetary gain) are so vicious that they provoke a counter
reaction.

Previously leftists (or limousine leftists) fighting for something attacked
politicians and institutions.

Now they attack regular people directly online and also offline -- Hillary
Clinton's "basket of deplorables" was unheard of in earlier times.

What you see in the right is a backlash. I wonder if _some_ left hard liners
(perhaps unbeknownst to themselves) are planted and financed by the right as
agent provocateurs.

------
mrtksn
As I recall Ellen Pao had her own set of scandals and she was portrayed quite
negatively on the news and social media. Correct me if I am wrong but at that
time the main issue with Reddit was the "barely legal" content, that is the
subreddits with underage girl photos and videos that were shared with obvious
pornographic intent but nothing illegal strictly speaking.

At that time some argued that Pao was a CEO hired for one mission: To take
down that questionable content.

I don't know how many people are missing the underage girl photos in Reddit
but the demand voices for it died of. Maybe it wasn't a free speech issue
after all.

Maybe Reddit's or any large community's issue is the disproportional
amplification of marginal voices, making them mainstream. It's not really
about the idea that these voices have but about the amount of noise that they
create giving the impression that there is a large demand for it and due to
the mechanics of the community the fake demand brings up the supply. The sub
in question, The_Donald, is not a place of free speech. It is heavily
moderated to push a narrative but if you don't pay attention you may have the
impression that this is an organic forum and people simply arrived at these
hateful ideas after a thorough discussion.

Analytics also would catch on this and the obvious business decision would be
to amplify that content that appears to be on-demand.

~~~
Cthulhu_
That was one of many things wrong with Reddit at the time, others were the
racist subreddits like coontown, and the bullying subreddits like
fatpeoplehate - see also
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/10/reddit-
ba...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/10/reddit-bans-five-
subreddits-harrassment-concerns).

If you tolerate stuff like that, you are complicit. She took a hard fall for
making those decisions and I think could've handled it better, but it needed
to be done.

------
Mengkudulangsat
Reddit is nigh unusable without the RES pluggin.

I use Reddit daily and every time I see suspicious users / subs I add them to
my RES filter.

It's now hundreds of names long, but my front page of the internet gets to be
the way I like it.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Is there a way to have a shared blocklist so it can be made a community
effort? I believe this is a thing with Twitter as well.

Of course, ideally you could block people in Reddit's own software, and said
users would be flagged / banned if they appear on enough people's blocklists.

~~~
Mengkudulangsat
It's an oft-requested feature, kind of like Easylist. I don't think it's a
good move.

Everyone's filter bubble should be unique.

------
masonic
Pao has quite a knack for landing in "hostile workplaces".

