Ellen Pao Resigned From Reddit

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Ellen Pao, interim CEO of Reddit, resigned today. How many of you think a lawsuit might be in the works?

Ellen Pao resigned from reddit today by mutual agreement. I'm delighted to announce that Steve Huffman, founder and the original reddit CEO, is returning as CEO. We are thankful for Ellen’s many contributions to reddit and the technology industry generally. She brought focus to chaos, recruited a world-class team of executives, and drove growth. She brought a face to reddit that changed perceptions, and is a pioneer for women in the tech industry. She will remain as an advisor to the board through the end of 2015. I look forward to seeing the great things she does beyond that. We’re very happy to have Steve back.
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I wonder what all the people who said she was doing the right thing and the cry babies wouldn't get what they wanted have to say about this.

The community has spoken. It worked like it was suppose to.
 
They might have played it safe and given her a large sum of cash to leave quietly, since they know how litigious her and her husband have been, and how motivated they certainly are by their legal costs from the failed lawsuit and of course the infamous Ponzi scheme which I believe is still pending in the courts. Sometimes its easier to just throw a pound of flesh down a hill and hope the wolf just chases it and leaves you alone.
 
Why the fuck does a glorified message board need a CEO and Excecutives?

A 12 year old could run reddit.
 
So, now that's she's gone, is Reddit magically going to become the important and valuable resource that all those furiously outraged users imagine it to be, rather than yet another cesspit of random internet twats?

No. No, it isn't.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Why the fuck does a glorified message board need a CEO and Excecutives?

A 12 year old could run reddit.
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If I'm not mistaken some pretty big names have used Reddit to communicate to 'the internet' and they profited somewhere in the 8 million range last year....I think.

with Facebook being a glorified Myspace and also worth billions reddit having a CEO shouldn't be that shocking.
 
But petitions mean nothing, the community being outspoken means nothing, shutting down reddit means nothing.

What now naysayers?
 
NickJames said:
But petitions mean nothing, the community being outspoken means nothing, shutting down reddit means nothing.

What now naysayers?
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NickJames said:
But petitions mean nothing, the community being outspoken means nothing, shutting down reddit means nothing.

What now naysayers?
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One example doesn't make the rule ... get Amazon to drop Bezos or Facebook to drop Zuckerberg and I will bow before the might of a petition :D
 
Of course the REAL question is... will this mean anything? Are they actually going to stop shadowbanning, censoring, unbanning subreddits, abusing mods, rehiring of wronged employees, and removing the "Pao policies"?

So this is a really great first step, but its not really over yet until we see some real policy changes to go along with the management change.
 
kbrickley said:
One example doesn't make the rule ... get Amazon to drop Bezos or Facebook to drop Zuckerberg and I will bow before the might of a petition :D
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Any CEO can be gone in an instant if they, like any other employee of a company, become a liability, at least one that's clearly more than they're worth. Pao would easily fit this bill.
 
heatlesssun said:
Any CEO can be gone in an instant if they, like any other employee of a company, become a liability, at least one that's clearly more than they're worth. Pao would easily fit this bill.
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On that I would agree ... this likely worked because they wanted to get rid of her anyway and this gave them a good excuse to blame someone else (rather than risk taking responsibility themselves) ... voting petitions have a lot of power (I saw some terrible laws, and a few good ones, passed by petition and popular vote in Arizona) ... internet petitions have mixed effects (they generally only persuade people to do something that they would have done anyway)
 
kbrickley said:
One example doesn't make the rule ... get Amazon to drop Bezos or Facebook to drop Zuckerberg and I will bow before the might of a petition :D
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Bezos and Zuckerberg have significant ownership/voting rights for their companies, if you want them to leave, you're going to need to convince them. Pao likely didn't have anywhere near their ownership levels.
 
kbrickley said:
On that I would agree ... this likely worked because they wanted to get rid of her anyway and this gave them a good excuse to blame someone else (rather than risk taking responsibility themselves) ... voting petitions have a lot of power (I saw some terrible laws, and a few good ones, passed by petition and popular vote in Arizona) ... internet petitions have mixed effects (they generally only persuade people to do something that they would have done anyway)
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Reddit being what it is, I think petitions would tend to be more effective than most other kinds of companies. Clearly there is this idea that Reddit is supposed to be a platform for ALL speech. In the real world that's a very slippery slope especially when you're a for profit company with the potential for being held liable for speech that no company would ever want to be associated with.

Pao's "social justice warrior" history was completely incompatible with Reddit's concept of "free speech". Any decisions that she made, even practical or rational ones, that had the slightest hint of "censorship" were destined to be a problem. I'm not trying to defend her. Indeed I have no idea why anyone would have hired her for this job which anyone that has the slightest understanding of Reddit and Pao's history would see that there's no way she was a fit for the CEO job at Reddit.
 
heatlesssun said:
Pao's "social justice warrior" history was completely incompatible with Reddit's concept of "free speech". Any decisions that she made, even practical or rational ones, that had the slightest hint of "censorship" were destined to be a problem. I'm not trying to defend her. Indeed I have no idea why anyone would have hired her for this job which anyone that has the slightest understanding of Reddit and Pao's history would see that there's no way she was a fit for the CEO job at Reddit.
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Wasn't she just an interim CEO? To me interim is temporary. They've found their permanent CEO and she's going to leave. If the boards she closed don't come back, then their goal was to let her take the heat...and she probably knew that going in.
 
nilepez said:
Wasn't she just an interim CEO? To me interim is temporary. They've found their permanent CEO and she's going to leave. If the boards she closed don't come back, then their goal was to let her take the heat...and she probably knew that going in.
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True, she was only interim CEO but still I have no idea why someone would pick her even temporarily for Reddit. It's like asking Sylvester the cat to the President of the Audubon Society. But to your point maybe that was the idea.
 
nilepez said:
Wasn't she just an interim CEO? To me interim is temporary. They've found their permanent CEO and she's going to leave. If the boards she closed don't come back, then their goal was to let her take the heat...and she probably knew that going in.
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you nailed it. of course the userbase may think it's achieved its goals but an interim CEO resigning after a series of unpopular changes take place is the general pattern these types of things follow
 
mope54 said:
you nailed it. of course the userbase may think it's achieved its goals but an interim CEO resigning after a series of unpopular changes take place is the general pattern these types of things follow
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It's very possible that she was bought in to be "the fall guy". But if that were the case I don't think it will go over well with Reddit folks. They pretty much want everything that Pao did reversed and won't be happy until that's done.
 
Why does the worlds largest cesspool need a CEO anyway, especially an interim one?
 
heatlesssun said:
It's very possible that she was bought in to be "the fall guy". But if that were the case I don't think it will go over well with Reddit folks. They pretty much want everything that Pao did reversed and won't be happy until that's done.
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Yup, but a victory nonetheless as:
1) Its been a long time, and there was no sign otherwise that she would have resigned without such a powerful push.
2) If the goal was to see how far management could push for monetization, *donning tinfoil hat*, with her as a planned fall-guy, at the very least the community has drawn a line in the sand and said "this far, no further"!

tumblr_loo9g6HWUz1qlctfho1_500.gif
 
Ducman69 said:
Yup, but a victory nonetheless as:
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The point being perhaps not enough of a victory. You just earlier outlined a list of complaints that now have nothing to do with Pao correcting since she's gone. This got pretty personal pretty quickly and het simply being gone I don't think is enough.
 
DarkAngel_ZERO said:
The usual suspects are already running the story that Pao was ousted by misogynist outrage.
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She's an elite with history and Reddit isn't exactly a household name. I'm as lefty as it gets in this forum and in wake of current events, Reddit being something of an outlier in social media world and her personal history it's just not a mainstream liberal cause.
 
heatlesssun said:
Clearly there is this idea that Reddit is supposed to be a platform for ALL speech.
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Nope, its a platform for all LEGAL speech. Reddit tolerates no child porn or anything else highly illegal. And there's no slippery slope: legal = allowed. Illegal = not allowed. That's as black and white and simple as it gets.

A slippery slope is trying to decide what speech to allow and not allow based on purely subjective criteria like if it would make someone feel bad, like fat shaming. Offense is taken, not given, and its subjective what may or may not offend someone, and especially in a culture of professional fake-outrage victims, virtually anything can offend anyone. You have a recipe section that condones the brutal slaughter and enslavement of animals? I'm highly offended as a vegan, how can we tolerate that? You say that God doesn't exist, well that's a slight against my religion, this is a blatant attack on my belief system! It goes on and on. That's the slippery slope. Legal, illegal... pfft, simple.
 
nilepez said:
Wasn't she just an interim CEO? To me interim is temporary. They've found their permanent CEO and she's going to leave. If the boards she closed don't come back, then their goal was to let her take the heat...and she probably knew that going in.
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Yes, she was.

She just decided to not leave the temporary position lol
 
Ducman69 said:
Nope, its a platform for all LEGAL speech. Reddit tolerates no child porn or anything else highly illegal. And there's no slippery slope: legal = allowed. Illegal = not allowed. That's as black and white and simple as it gets.
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One of the slipperiest of slopes is human expression. Legal or not, words are far more powerful than our typically cynical age realizes. Words can install hope or fear. Words can inspire strength or cowardice. Words can inspire love or hate. Words can do anything for those who know how to use them. To those that don't understand this, their consequences are beyond unpredictable.
 
heatlesssun said:
One of the slipperiest of slopes is human expression. Legal or not, words are far more powerful than our typically cynical age realizes. Words can install hope or fear. Words can inspire strength or cowardice. Words can inspire love or hate. Words can do anything for those who know how to use them. To those that don't understand this, their consequences are beyond unpredictable.
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And they can do all of these simultaneously.
 
heatlesssun said:
One of the slipperiest of slopes is human expression. Legal or not, words are far more powerful than our typically cynical age realizes. Words can install hope or fear. Words can inspire strength or cowardice. Words can inspire love or hate. Words can do anything for those who know how to use them. To those that don't understand this, their consequences are beyond unpredictable.
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Sticks and stones can break my bones...

And, uhm, "slippy slope"... I don't think that means what you think it means.

There's no slope. Everything and anything is fair game, but they are divided into subreddits. Its one thing if someone is harassing you and getting in your face... but get some perspective. If you don't like a subreddit, go into a different one or make your own. The idea that you have to censor the mere existence of something completely legal is the epitome of intolerance and thought policing.
 
DarkAngel_ZERO said:
The usual suspects are already running the story that Pao was ousted by misogynist outrage.
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OMG you're not kidding! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/t...ecutive-resignation.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

The NY Times BS meter is off the charts! Fortunately though, while the far left wing may have prominent positions in the media, petitions like on Reddit show that the internet isn't as dumb and uninformed as they had hoped, and a LOT of people are able to easily sniff out propaganda now.

A+ for effort though, the spin is hardcore on that article, lol!
 
heatlesssun said:
You went out of your way to tell me that you didn't think I knew what the word "transcendent" means. As usual, you were wrong.
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The misapplication was egregious, or at least such an exaggeration in the context used as to be laughable... or should taco bell rename their menu with the Burrito Transcental... ;)

Look, the slippery slope refers to taking a step or steps that quickly escalate. There's no escalation in the very simple rule that everything goes as long as its not illegal. That doesn't endorse or condemn anything, and is simply an open forum, and its how Reddit has existed since its inception to much applause of the internet until it was "Pao'ed". The internet has spoken, at least the portion that likes Reddit as a platform, and they have made it clear they prefer freedom of legal expression over censorship, and again, if you don't like a subreddit then just don't visit it. You'll never be offended by speech that you have to go out of your way to read in the first place. https://www.reddit.com/r/blackpower/
 
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