

Reddit’s Chief Apologizes After Employee’s Dismissal - yincrash
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/technology/reddits-chief-apologizes-after-employees-dismissal.html

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generic_user
The general impression I see the most is that Pao and here team are trying
wash the site of any content that Corporate Advertisers find offensive and try
to monetize as much of the site as they can starting with a monetization
scheme for IAMA where PR firms can use IAMA as celebrity advertising with
softball pre screened questions.

Victoria was the key person organizing IAMA guests across the whole of Reddit.
She helped to enforced the strict policy that IAMA have that the person is
actually there and not a PR rep fielding questions. And that the questions are
real and generally keeping the quality and integrity high.

There has already been a number of high traffic subs that have decided to
close down and move to voat.co or other sites.

It's telling that instead of addressing the community directly Pao and here
group stage a PR blitz in the media trying to spin a false narrative instead
of addressing Reddit first and dealing with Redditors concerns about moves to
limit free speech. Commercialisation and firing of key community friendly
staff. It shows total concept for Reddit users and the same sort of dishonest
personality that would try to destroy the credibility of her former employer
Kleiner Perkins with false gender discrimination lawsuits for 100 million.
which she lost spectacularly with all 12 jurors siding with Kleiner Perkins.

Pao has shown on numerous occasions she is a toxic personality. And has no
interest in Reddit and the communities there.

if anyone is planning on launching your FREEZE PEACH community platform NOW IS
THE TIME...

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TomGullen
The whole backlash against her has quite frankly been revolting. I no longer
care what she did to offend so many people, but sympathise with her as this is
undoubtedly a horrific experience for her.

The firing of the key employee may of been stupid, but not deserving of some
of the hatred being gleefully promoted across Reddit. Trying to get her photo
coming up for searches of Hitler, commenting on her physical appearance, all
the horrible little shits on the internet are coming out in droves over this.

The petitions opening (and longest) paragraph is idiotic and attempts to
assassinate her characters and it's sad that "censoring" a community promoting
hatred of obese people is something that motivates people to take democratic
action.

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kawsper
Key employees, multiple.

/u/kickme444 who have been running redditgifts, and have been running give-
away events between users of reddit have also been fired, most notably the
secret santa. He did a TedX talk here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoUVH05kEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoUVH05kEg)

It is an interesting move to lay-off your employees that are closest to the
end-users, I hope reddit will survive their internal struggles.

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generic_user
Its much worse then people know out of 38 admins who have left Reddit since
2008 23 have been within the last 9 months.
[https://archive.is/vMQfS](https://archive.is/vMQfS)

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PaulHoule
Reddit has jumped the shark.

I remember when this happened with Digg; Digg reached a certain level of
success, but then discovered that it's existing users were a barrier to
acquiring new users and getting revenue. They picked a fight with their power
users, who left, but never got anybody to replace them, so then the spammers
took over.

Digg users formed a diaspora and moved to reddit.

Many sections of reddit are overrun by the kind of people who hate Ellen Pao
and everything she stands for. These people may have a point, but they are
haters at the core and, like the Digg user base, they are a barrier to
mainstream success.

I think reddit is going to look like a fight between an immovable object and
an irresistable force and that just can't be good.

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generic_user
the backlash against Pao is from all the major subs /history /science /video
/iama and the rest. Thousands of subs turned there subs private in protest to
force the 'new management' to come to the table and answer some urgent
questions and address major issues that are effecting all the subs.

This is about a series of bad decisions by Pao and her 'new management' trying
to make fundamental changes to how Reddit works which most Redditors think
will damage the community and viability of the site. Possibly to the point of
a mass exodus as Reddit is turned into DiggBook 2.0.

Narrative spinning about 'haters' and 'misogynists' is deflection. Trying to
cover the bad decision making and contempt under a 'victim hood status'. Much
like Pao used fake gender discrimination allegations to try and extort
millions of dollars from her former employer. False victum hood and extortion
is what Ellen Pao stands for. And perhaps anti free speach censorship and
spreading toxic corporate marketing.

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PaulHoule
IMHO it is the largest groups on Reddit that are the worst, although I am sure
it has some really nasty little corners.

Now being a hater doesn't mean you're not right, but all of your valid issues
are contaminated with the baggage that everybody involved is bringing in from
the rest of their lives.

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x5n1
It's funny but Reddit is not the front page of the internet. It's the comment
section of the internet. If you actually see what's going on here, it's the
same people who care to comment on things. Some of whom are trolls and very
difficult to control. The trolls from your comment section are having their
day on Reddit. And the community is behind them.

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DigitalSea
I think the community have gone beyond the point where an apology from Ellen
Pao will be sufficient enough to quell the dissatisfaction users have with
Reddit. The only solution I can see is Pao stepping down or being replaced,
followed by some actual management policies and ways of keeping the community
happen (acknowledging them would be a good start).

The site has been on a downhill slope for a while now and as shown, this isn't
a localised incident, a lot of people are not only angry about the handling of
Victoria's dismissal, but how the site is being run. Why now? Why is Ellen Pao
only apologising for years worth of mismanagement of Reddit after the
community took a stand? This goes beyond what just happened, this has been a
long time in the making. It comes across as a forced apology because before
all of this blackout controversy, they were doing nothing. The community was
being ignored, mods were running rampant shadowbanning and removing threads,
mad with power. And ironically mods want better tools and more power? The
promotion of krispykrackers just goes to show how out-of-touch Reddit has
become with its users.

It's great that they're acknowledging there are issues and that they will do
better, but I think it is too late. Maybe I am wrong, but I just can't see
things getting better or if they do, staying better for long. I have moved
over to voat.co and when it comes back online, my 8 year old Reddit account
will be nothing more than an effigy to a site that was once great. I
personally have nothing against Ellen, the whole problem with Reddit goes well
beyond her and members of the community also share in the blame. The
centralised approach Reddit takes to management is its downfall and if they're
not careful, we could see what happened to Digg when they messed over power
users happen to Reddit as well (evident by the influx of users over at
voat.co).

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sxp
The reddit post and comments has much more useful info:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize/)

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brymaster
Earlier discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840805)

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dataker
Reddit is undergoing a gradual decline, whose climax might have been this.

While Pao is also blamed, these problems are a reflection of a long-standing
centralized management team.

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LGBT_2000
Let's be frank, if it was "Eric" rather than "Ellen" Pao (and, even more so,
if it were "Smith" rather than "Pao"), we wouldn't be hearing 1/1,000,000th
the uproar we've heard about all this.

Nothing drives Angry White Men on The Internet more ballistic than a woman or
a person of color in a position of authority. You see the exact same thing
with the sheer insanity the right-wing is driven to by President Obama's
essentially centrist administration.

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engi_nerd
Please provide evidence to support your statement, because I do not see how
your second and third sentences necessarily follow from the first.

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LGBT_2000
We unfortunately do not have enough women or people of color in positions of
authority for me to provide some rigorous statistics documenting the
experiences of a swath of such people (though this gives a good indicator
we've got a problem).

However, it seems quite clear to me that minorities in positions of authority
or public visibility face a level of vitriol unlike that experienced by some
boring old white guy. Look at the level of hatred directed towards Hilary
Clinton or Barack Obama; look at the hatred directed towards a woman trying to
present at a tech conference; look at the _death threats_ Anita Sarkeesian has
received for making YouTube videos on video games.

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dudul
I love your parody of delusional sjw. Very authentic. If only you had
mentioned the patriarchy! It would have been sjw bingo.

