I think this was the right thing to do from a PR perspective. Having Steve back as the new CEO will definitely be good for the community.<p>I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS:<p>> As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. [1] The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people even if there is Internet between you. If the reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website but it will never be a truly great community. Steve’s great challenge as CEO [2] will be continuing the work Ellen started to drive this forward.<p>All in all, a good day I think.
I don't like this at all.<p>Even if she wasn't the right person (I don't know), all the worst elements of the site are going to see this as a victory for their awful behavior and it's going to get worse.<p>The people who attacked her with sexism and comments about her personal relationships. The people who supported FPH even though they were attacking people in real life and off Reddit, not just posting comments in their personal corner of 'discussion'.<p>She didn't do a good job of it, but at least she tried to stand up against some of the worst of Reddit.<p>I worry heavily that if the new person doesn't draw a clear line at the start things are going to get a lot worse in terms of hate/abuse/harassment.<p>EDIT: After posting this I saw Nilay Patel tweeted basically the same thing: <a href="https://twitter.com/reckless/status/619620964658245632" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/reckless/status/619620964658245632</a>
<i>“Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said.</i><p>What exactly "phenomenal" has she done? Reddit works pretty much the same as it worked several years ago, but in the meantime she managed to piss off the majority of community, which is the only reason Reddit exists
Right or wrong, fair or unfair, or whatever you think about Ellen, I think most people agree that she had become personally and professionally toxic to reddit as a brand and community and even if she did a great job from here on out, it was going to be an uphill battle to restore community confidence in her as a CEO.<p>I personally don't believe she had the right qualifications to lead a community-driven site like reddit as it is today, but would have the right qualifications if reddit was going to start making a serious pivot to a more lucrative money making direction via commercial partnerships, advertising, etc.<p>Reddit may <i>still</i> go that direction, but Huffman won't have the same baggage weighing him down.<p>(note: this will also likely feed the conspiracy that her turn in the head office was a convenience for her lawsuit, now that she lost, she has no reason to stay in that position)<p>I agree with other comments chastising the community for the racist/sexist/whatever nature of lots of the negative comments against her. It was childish and dangerous. She had enough issues worthy of reasonable criticism that it wasn't even necessary.<p>I think this is a good thing for reddit.
><i>Sam Altman, a member of Reddit’s board, said he personally appreciated Ms. Pao’s efforts during her two years working at the start-up. “Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said.</i><p>This is clearly nonsense, otherwise there wouldn't have been a grassroots campaign to remove Ellen Pao from her role.<p>If Sam Altman honestly believes that Ellen did a "phenomenal" job, he should reconsider his own position at YCombinator.
Maybe I missed it, but was there ever any information on why Victoria was fired, or whether Pao actually had anything (or everything) to do with it?<p>From where I was sitting, it seemed like no one actually learned the full story, which might be confidential or take time to contextualize/safely explain, and everyone immediately threw it on Pao's lap and downvoted any holding maneuvers she and the rest of the staff tried to attempt. It was poorly handled, sure, but it seems like there was a lot of finger pointing before anyone knew what was actually happening. For that matter, do we even know now?<p>If I'm wrong, though, happy to correct my ideas here. (grammar edit)
Ellen Pao gives the reason for leaving on /r/self: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_thank_you/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3cudi0/resignation_tha...</a><p>> <i>So why am I leaving? Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles.</i><p>This is believable because there have been odd business decisions under her watch, not just policy decisions. RedditMade, one of the intended revenue-generating models for Reddit, failed while she was interim CEO. Alienating /r/IAMA probably did not help.
This entire debacle and the 'communities' (the small vocal part that acted horribly) response pretty much hammered the last nail into the coffin for me when it comes to reddit.<p>With the exception of a few niche subreddits and the (few) incredibly moderated major subreddit's the whole place has become a negative pit with horses beaten so badly to death Findus put them in their lasagna.<p>Twitter often feels the same way as well (I'm pretty much at the unfollow as soon as someone acts like an idiot stage now).<p>Ironically the only social network I don't hate is Facebook and that's because I have about 20 people I consider true friends on there, all signal no noise.
Pretty much had to happen. To say that the Victoria situation was mishandled is a severe understatement. I wonder what will happen with communities like FPH and others (that have since moved to Voat). Will reddit lessen their censorship efforts?<p>Time will tell. IMO, the problem at hand is that reddit is still trying to make advertisers their bread and butter. And advertisers will never be overly attracted to censorship-free spaces.<p>Even though I may not agree with her aggressively politically-correct agenda (nor does most of reddit), I think it may have been a smart move from a business dev. perspective.
> “It became clear that the board and I had a different view on the ability of Reddit to grow this year,” Ms. Pao said in an interview. “Because of that, it made sense to bring someone in that shared the same view.”<p>Does this mean that the board thought Pao was being too aggressive in pushing growth or <i>not aggressive enough</i>? If it's the latter then the Reddit community is in for a shock.
As someone who frequents only a couple of subs on Reddit (which were completely insulated from this fiasco), I have no idea why people were so pissed off.<p>So she made a bad decision. Big f<i>cking deal.<p>"She's killing the community!". Well, if your idea of 'community' is making public rape threads (while you use a throwaway) and threaten to kill a person, then maybe your community deserves to die.<p>Reddit has a </i>lot* of good. I've been there long enough to see it. But it has a lot of absolute low-lifes clogging its sewers as well.
Being the CEO of reddit is a political position. And Ellen Pao has too much drama in her life to be a good politician. Losing a sexual harassment case, marrying a crook who stole millions...those are events that don't happen by accident.
Yup, she did awesome Sam. Especially recently. (Makes me wonder how bad one of these people would have to screw up in order NOT to get the happy handwave as they're booted.)<p>I didn't even know who she was until "the last few months." Which have been a parade of increasingly-negative press and idiotic behavior. And that's from reading Reuters and the NY Times -- I don't even use Reddit.<p>---<p>Sam Altman, a member of Reddit’s board... “Ellen has done a phenomenal job, especially in the last few months,” he said.
The one take away I have from this situation is that we have an honesty problem. People criticize Reddit as a platform of hate and vitrol, but as in reality this only partially describes the entirety. They complain that people on the internet are too free to speak their minds, but perhaps this is a reflection on our society a place where honesty and the free exchange of ideas is discouraged.<p>Response to material:
<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/reddit-is-a-shrine-to-the-internet-we-wanted-and-thats-a-pro#.mkVMY61GKa" rel="nofollow">http://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/reddit-is-a-shrine-to-...</a><p>Food for thought:
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/psiljamaki/posts/10153334440110516?notif_t=like" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/psiljamaki/posts/10153334440110516?...</a>
> “The attacks were worse on Ellen because she is a woman,”<p>@sama, how do you explain this claim without ignoring the community's enormous support for Victoria Taylor?
Seems like Reddit hired Ellen without checking up her references at the previous job, ie. Kleiner, and now they harvest the same results - insufficient performance and high scandals.<p>(note: there is nothing about her sex here - just read the case materials and you'll see that she behaved just like a jerk at Kleiner - for God sake she complained there that some assistant was using company fax to send brain scans of dying from cancer mother)
It's interesting how fast people go from hating[1] /u/kn0thing to love[2] him again<p>[1]: <a href="https://np.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama_set_to_private_over_mod_firing/csqg24d" rel="nofollow">https://np.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_old_team_at_reddit/csz1gcn" rel="nofollow">https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_ol...</a>
Isn't it already too late? How can a new captain save the sinking ship? The new CEO would be standing on a double edged sword. If he reverses course immediately claiming reddit an absolute free-speech enviromnent, the people who wanted a safe-space will be disillusioned, if he doesn't the rest of the users will keep seeking for another platform.
Reddit would do well to hire someone with experience in the association management field. Those folks specialize in managing fractious communities such that the volunteers not only stick around, they're happy to pay for the privilege.
Ellen Pao was a scapegoat. She was the face of a lot of changes that didn't sit well with the community. Now the people clamor, they remove her, and the people are happy again.<p>Notice how they didn't mention anything about reverting the bad changes to the website. ;)
I'm sorry to see it go down like this. Redditors treatment of her got <i>really</i> ugly (/r/all after the FPH banning was shocking) over the past few weeks, and it's disheartening to see people's bad behavior rewarded.
As a CEO she chose to take actions in manner and method that allowed things to spiral out of control. It was her job to control the message and blowback. She failed at her job, therefore she needed to go. It is really that simple.
Converting large-scale investor dollars into compelling returns using the world's most entitled and monomaniacal message board: not, in fact, an easy job. Pretty sure very few of us could do it either.
I will be interested to see if anything changes regarding the management of Reddit or at least the communities opinion of it. I wonder if the community will chalk this up as a win and suddenly forget all of the reasons they have been complaining which really have nothing to do with Pao in the first place.
After seeing what Ellen went through, I think Sam will need to raise some more funds to offer a significant pay bump to entice even mediocre talent to fill her void.
I wonder if a Law Degree runs counter to running a social network? Where authority bumps up against anarchy. Imagine Peter Thiel running reddit. Both Thiel and Pao have law degrees. Both have been lightning rods. I suspect a JD comes in handy for some ventures. Such as Thiel running Paypal or Pao sourcing funding for RPX. In both of those cases, it is about removing ambiguity. For social nets, the opposite holds true. Because, ambiguity is the main product.
I'm not even going to debate whether or not she was an effective CEO. At the end of the day it's about the lawsuit, and I'm not going to argue the merits of that either. The only thing she should have realized from the start was that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You either choose reddit or the lawsuit. You can't divide your focus between both or you lose both.
Friendly reminder that this very website widely supported a campaign to make a black woman leave a board of a tech company. [1] And she actually didn't do anything questionable while being on board, to warrant such an outrage.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069</a>
So, there are two stories people use to sum all the affair up: either "the witch is dead", or "pitchfork mob got what they wanted".<p>But neither of these stories really fit the information we have right now. Both of them fit some of it, and look realistic — unless you look at the whole picture.<p>The best conclusion we can have here is that we don't actually know what's _really_ going on, just a bunch of facts and a couple of theories.
That article was more suited for editorial than technology. Pao was hated mainly for things either done by reddit before her, or done by her before reddit. Unfortunately, as leaders often are, she was held responsible for both. That being said she was interim, and was apparently not aligned with reddit culturally. That's an internet thing, not, as this article was so quick to claim, a gender thing.
In the 24th Upvoted by Reddit podcast, Steve and Alexis talked about all the great content and communities hiding within Reddit that go undiscovered. I'm excited to see how they'll try to solve that problem, and hope they find a great solution. Reddit is really great, and it's very cool to see both Steve and Alexis back to enjoy and advance it.
I posted this over on reddit but it got lost in the noise:<p>Cool, I guess. But after having spent some time on voat.co I think reddit will get less and less of my attention (not that anyone gives a shit about me but I suspect I'm not alone).<p>Reddit's management has destroyed any sense of trust I had in Reddit (I'm looking at you /u/kn0thing, it's not just Ellen, my understanding is you fired Victoria, right? And then grabbed popcorn [I know, cheap shot, but it appears like you really fell out of touch]).<p>It appears that it is all about making money which I think is going to be the end of Reddit for some of us. Reddit could have a decent revenue stream on reasonable ads but that wasn't enough, it had to be more. That is really troubling because the next thing you might decide to "monetize" is what each of your users reads. That would make the NSA look amateurs and would be a massive invasion of privacy. It would also be very easy to monetize. Given all that has been going on, it would appear to be just a matter of time before "user optimized marketing" appears.<p>Welcome back but the existing management has dug you a mighty big hole. I don't trust you any more.
Sometimes internet-hate is completely arbitrary.<p>Maybe she screwed up some things, I don't know, but from reading posts on reddit it felt like an arbitrary cat video going viral - the amount of attention was not warranted by the "causes".<p>Remember PG getting all the shit on twitter because of his misunderstood statement about women?<p>Outrage is a powerful emotion, and people enjoy participating in revolutions when it doesn't require any effort and can be done from the safety of a computer screen.<p>I'm pretty sure 99% of people participating in this shitstorm had no good reason to care about it at all, and did it just because it felt "fun" to participate in something like this.<p>Also - way to teach an angry mob that they can get what they want if they yell about it enough by giving in to their demands.
We keep hearing over and over again about how it's a small minority of vocal people who spew vitriol in any community, but how about providing some real, hard data?<p>Reddit has enough data and skill to identify approximately the percetage of users who engaged in this type of behaviour at the very least.<p>I'd rather see the numbers myself than read a press release simply stating something and being asked to believe it.
Hey I've got an idea:<p>Let's all cry together because someone said something mean about a public figure. In fact, I'm incapable of discussing any other aspect of this event until this unspeakable atrocity has been addressed.
This NYT report is as much detached from reality and propagandist as reporting on support for the 2003 Iraq war. Is Victoria, the popular Reddit employee fired, in support of whom all this affair happened, a male?<p>Attempting such a propaganda in this connected day and age is supremely stupid.
During the KP trial I had always kept an open mind towards her arguments...until I later learned she was married to Buddy Fletcher, one of the biggest scoundrels and thieves in the investment world in recent years. The character and judgment of a person who would fall in love and wed someone like that says more than I can articulate. It's oddly reassuring to see my (and many, many others') skepticism about both her judgment and motives validated.
The knife cuts both ways. The clickbait media and various groups are trying to paint the now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again. Over 200,000 people with legitimate concerns sign a petition to have Pao step down yet they still carry on with there charade.<p>People are sick and tired of the media and a small group of militant activists trying to silence people who they disagree with. They engage in all forms of harassment, trying to get people fired, posting addresses and family pictures etc. The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts.<p>The clickbait media has to be called out more then anyone for trying to turn every issue no matter how banal into a black and white battle between good and evil and then fanning the flames on both sides. Its extremely cynical mostly to drive traffic to there sites. There is zero accountability in the media today and zero ethics. Everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations.
PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted. We cannot trust Altman is being honest that he appreciated her efforts. We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. All of this that comes out of spokesmen is carefully crafted as a result of a numbers game.<p>When do we hear "so and so CEO did a horrible job and was forced out by the board."? Never. So are we to believe there is no such thing as a terrible CEO? Will we hear Sam saying "We made a terrible decision putting her in charge."? Never. Even if it was the actual truth.<p>Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman.
Corporations are like sea of cockroaches on the dark floor. They look vast. Roaches have their little fights and wars, but when they make some random noise and draw outside attention, it's funny to look how individual cockroaches run away from the spotlight.
I am opening a bottle of champagne and at the same time answer my own question: it took 3 weeks for the community to get rid off a tyrant. Well done Reddit!<p>Friendly reminder that if you are using downvotes for disagreement than you are doing it wrong.
There's a fine line between being polite and being so boring that it's stifling.
Every commenting site has it's herd mentality and punishment of thought crimes.<p>Reddit users just wore it on the their sleeves and trying to suppress them was silly.<p>It might turn into DIGG 2 pretty fast and might not recover.<p>The investors and the "community" are just too far a part on this.