The thing that is kind of strange, but not surprising, to me is that the thing that they're using as justification for this is the firing of one of the admins, but these people don't know why that admin was fired, and also don't know who did the firing. Is Reddit the company primarily controlled by Ellen Pao or does she have managers that help her and therefore responsible for this kind of stuff?<p>I get the feeling that a lot of these people don't like is that Reddit is not what it used to be in that it's a "free for all" because it's now more business oriented, meaning that Reddit has to cater to its shareholders just as much as its community. They don't see past the fact that someone that supported them was fired and see the reality that these things happen, and it sucks, but it's a reality of a business. As an aside, if the moderators had such a problem with what was going on, they should have been much more vocal about it and raised flags before instead of acting like children and throwing tantrums by making subreddits private (I call it a tantrum because they made it private for like 12-24 hours, most of that time during the US night where there's not as much traffic).<p>I'm not saying Ellen Pao is the best person for this job, and while I don't have super high opinions of her, I don't believe all the stuff Reddit says about her either, and she's being vilified for something that could have been completely out of her control. If you want to give a justification for "firing her", at least use the one that she's not very connected with day-to-day of the non-business side of the site, the community and the volunteer moderators, and that she doesn't use the product she's the CEO of. But given they've raised a lot of money recently I'd guess she doesn't seem to be doing poorly to the shareholders/investors, or at least isn't doing a piss poor job.
I seriously hope Reddit board does not fire their CEO. Group bullying should not work in this case. This is not a matter of life and death. If some users are upset with the Reddit way, nothing is to stop them from creating an alternative. If they fear most people won't follow, then perhaps their opinion is that of a minority.<p>When someone owns a platform, they can run it as they please. No one is being woken up at gun point and forced to use Reddit.<p>If the users win in this case (where we do not have the details to know whether they have treated others unfairly), it will simply be like paying a ransom and not expecting the receiver to come back for more.
This seems like a bit of a disaster: <a href="https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_has_riama_been_set_to_private/csq204d" rel="nofollow">https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_has...</a> and <a href="https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3c0hcz/welcome_back/" rel="nofollow">https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3c0hcz/welcome_back/</a> (linked from the petition)
I know this is about the firing of a reddit mod, but I can't shake of the feeling that the people behind this petition care more about the banning of hateful subs. This is a retribution for them.<p>I really feel disappointed when people think free speech is more important than anything. Yes, it is important, but we defend it for a reason. Because it protects the weak. But when I see people defending it so they can harass or otherwise spew hate speech about minorities, I wonder where did we do wrong. Maybe, just maybe, we treated it like a dogma and then it backfired? It should've been a means to an end, not the other way.
Go through the comments left on the petition, and you'll see someone posting under Pao's name with the message "I'm a cunt."<p>I don't think Reddit's management is the undoing of Reddit, its the immaturity of the community and the loudness of its most extreme elements. It's disheartening that so many people are getting behind such racist and shortsighted comments.
What a tempest in a tea cup. Reddit users have a far too high opinion of themselves. We're all getting tired of their angsty drama leaching over into real life.
And no one will be talking about that next week. Can we please avoid upvoting internet non-news/drama on HN?<p>EDIT: seeing the downvotes, if anyone followed what happened when they banned the racist subreddits and the backlash of the vocal minority: nobody was talking about it the next day.<p>EDIT2: plus the fact that this is totally bullying on the CEO. Why should we echo this?