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.
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.
Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman.
No one said give her a pass, it was simply said the 'vitriol was appalling.' That simply means that the denizens of the internet when taken as a collective are horrible people who can not voice criticism in a civil manner.
Assuming she was completely horrible and a terrible CEO... Assuming that! How could someone's lack of ability to do their job (or anything else for that matter) make the type of death and rape threats that this 'vitriol' was seen being expressed with less appalling?
You are falling into a common pit where you may think it was good she has been replaced, and you may be right, and gosh darn it you are certainly entitled to that opinion. But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible, you become part of the problem by basically saying she deserved to receive those threats.
> But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible
So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What?
You know the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[1] right? It applies to male and females alike.
And it's pretty scummy how your comment implicates GP said she "deserved to receive those threats", when all he/she did was to point out Pao did an atrocious job and was an awful choice for CEO, and you'll never hear the board admit that.
Yishan was actually an incapable CEO and a bad choice. And all the complaints about Ellen apply to him too: he censored subreddits with no clear policy, he was at odds with his own staff and his own board, and he presided over lots of unhappy departures of valuable employees for stupid reasons. A lot of the problems we see now are his doing.
Did he get the same sort of personal, visceral threats?
Yishan was a massively unpopular CEO and both him and his decisions were strongly disliked. I'm sure he received his fair share of death threats, because internet, but there were also two points to keep in mind for his time as CEO:
- He wasn't in the middle of a bunch of massively controversial fraud/discrimination lawsuits and other issues
- Reddit's administration wasn't a damn soap opera at the time, so people didn't care as much.
PS: You don't need to be a woman to receive death threats. It's not an exclusivity. People are assholes, like I said. I've worked long enough in the video game industry to know this as a fact. Unfortunately, America has this very weird narrative about women which only serves to reinforce the stereotypes they claim to fight. And since it's past 1AM in Europe, we're seeing this narrative dominate the comments... it's pretty sad.
While we're at it, there were two unpopular firings last month at reddit. The Reddit Gifts guy, who was let go without much fanfare, and chooter (Victoria), who got the entire website to support her, go dark in protest, and fast-forwarded Pao's resignation.
But we don't mention those, no no. It's only "sexism" and "mysoginy" because we don't like what happened to a woman. When it's good for a woman, that's just sheer luck. Or white-knightism, whatever floats your boat.
I agree that, from the public information, it sounds like both of those terminations were potentially ill-advised. (There's also rumors that both of them were loosely tied to Yishan's everyone-in-SF policy, as it happens, but only rumors.) Obviously there's more going on than the public will ever know, unless Reddit corporate email ends up on Wikileaks, so I don't actually have an opinion on them because I don't have anywhere near enough information to make having an opinion worthwhile.
However, unless I misread this thread, the conversation wasn't about whether employee terminations were well-advised. I was talking about which Reddit employees received interminable ugliness from Redditors, and whether it was correlated with what the public knew about their performance in their jobs.
To my knowledge, there was no public discussion, vitriolic or otherwise, of either /u/kickme444 or /u/chooter's performance before their terminations, so I'm not sure what point you are making. (There were some comments that received flak for supporting /u/ekjp's "Removing Harassing Subreddits" post.)
edit: I should also note that I'm not taking any position on the merit of /u/ekjp's departure, as mediated by the Board. Probably it was the right thing to do for the site, and quite likely it was the right thing to do for her, as well, but again, I'm not privy to anything that would let me have a well-informed opinion. I am only taking a position on the vitriol leading up to it. I think we'd both agree that it would be a bad thing if the vitriol was causative -- either if the Board relented to the worst parts of the mob (instead of, say, to respectful argument about why she's the wrong CEO), or if she stepped down because she couldn't take it any more -- and I'm hoping and assuming that it's not the case.
GP's example was that two reddit employees, in two similar situations, got treated differently. They had a different gender, and the woman was treated exponentially worse.
My example was that two reddit employees, in two similar situations, got treated differently. Thad a different gender, and in this case, the woman was treated exponentially better.
So my point was that you can play the "let's find the sexist" game. Or you can just admit that there are other circumstances at play. I'm not saying sexes didn't play a role, I'm saying Pao wasn't hated because she was a woman. Nobody gave two shits about her until she started making unpopular moves.
Okay, now I understand what you mean, thanks. That did not occur to me at first. I think part of why was that /u/kickme444's departure was not well-publicized until after /u/chooter's, so it seems natural that the response was more muted. But more fundamentally, I'm not looking for sexism for the sake of looking for sexism: I'm looking for plausible causes of why one person was on the receiving end of way more obviously awful behavior than another, and how we can minimize the vitriol that anyone gets. If sexism is a plausible cause, and calling it what it is helps to eliminate it, then let's do that.
Kindness does not cancel out or excuse vitriol. If women get more kindness and also more vitriol online, getting less vitriol to women is still important; I am not concerned about some sum between positive behavior and negative behavior.
Let's say that the Star-Belly Sneetches either get rich beyond their wildest dreams or find themselves starving and begging on the streets. The Plain-Belly Sneetches don't tend to do better than middle class, but they don't do worse, either. To me, there is a single obvious injustice here worth our immediate efforts. If we make sure that Star-Bellied Sneetches have a place to live and food to eat, and if they still get super rich sometimes (i.e., there wasn't an underlying economic problem that advantaged some at the cost of others), then we can look at why that is and why the Plain-Belly Sneetches don't. But worrying about the Plain-Belly Sneetches first is misplaced, and it's clearly not the case that there's some net equality between the two groups because their average wealth is the same.
There's something offputting about referring to people by their reddit usernames as if that's an important facet to their personhood. It makes me think, perhaps without justification, that you have your identity far too tied up in a silly website.
I don't know all of their names off the top of my head, and I assume most people reading don't, either, so I went with the Reddit usernames to optimize for clarity and consistency (and Googlability), at the risk of being depersonalizing.
That said, for all four of these people, that "silly website" was not only their job and livelihood, it was also very much a passion of theirs. It's entirely reasonable for it to be a strong part of their identity, and I think it's a bit disrespectful to deny them that.
>So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What?
No one in this chain of comments said that; besides maybe the GP you are defending. I referred to her as a woman and said the type of hate was horrible. There was no causation there.
>You know the ....
No shit, whats your point how does that justify ANYONE getting death and rape threats for doing their job in a manner others consider badly? So what if some of the people threatening her were probably also female? Or was there a different equally horrible point?
>And it's pretty scummy how your comment implicates GP said she "deserved to receive those threats", when all he/she did was to point out Pao did an atrocious job and was an awful choice for CEO, and you'll never hear the board admit that.
I am sorry I didn't mean to implicate that. I meant to flat out say that is what the the GP was effectively doing.
That person decided to reply to a post of which the only content was saying that the internet acted poorly.(basically a truism), and they made a post that disagrees as a response, the only way that post furthers the conversation as a reply is with them supporting the very hate the original poster was talking about.
Look if a person does not want come across as supporting rape and death threats it is best not to disagree with posts which are only pointing out how horrible those type of threats are. It's a pretty basic idea. And if a person does want to support rape and death threats, they should just flat out say so, that way they can be removed as a user on whatever sites want to have actual conversations.
> Look if a person does not want come across as supporting rape and death threats it is best not to disagree with posts which are only pointing out how horrible those type of threats are. It's a pretty basic idea. And if a person does want to support rape and death threats, they should just flat out say so, that way they can be removed as a user on whatever sites want to have actual conversations.
This is the same discourse BS that we get from politicians, name-dropping "terrorism" and "paedophilia" to pass random bills, laws or make people swallow unpopular opinions.
It's frankly repulsive seeing it happen here too. "Oh you disagree with me? YOU SUPPORT RAPE."
I have a riddle for you. If literally the only content of what someone says is "Rape is Bad" and a person disagrees.... Does the disagreeing person support rape?
1. Nowhere in this thread was someone saying "Rape is Bad", without a bunch of other words around it. Nor was there anyone saying "I disagree", without a bunch of nuances and explanations around it.
2. You're still playing the politician game, trying to reduce the argument down to what suits you best, even after being called out on it.
I'm not falling into this trap. If you want a sensible discussion, please feel free to actually try and elaborate rather than present riddles and try to play tricks.
Show me the other CONTENT in this post besides that rape and death threats are appalling.
Patrick_Devine 2 hours ago | parent | flag
As an occasional user of reddit, this whole ordeal has confirmed the reason why I prefer not to hang out in its forums. I have no idea whether Ellen was a capable CEO, but the vitriol which I kept seeing peripherally (through other news articles and here on HN) was absolutely appalling.
I'm not seeing any mention of rape of death threats in the post you pasted. You're projecting your own assumption that the peripheral vitriol the comment is talking about consisted of only rape and death threats.
Take a step back and try look at it with a clear head. Criticism can take many other forms, you know...
So by being aware of the actual vitriol that this person publicly received, which very much did include rape and death threats. I am wrong to think when that post mentions the vitriol being appalling, they are referring to the the rape and death threats which were said? Alright my bad, next time I will assume they mean that well mannered posts about the person's inability to manage a company, which also very much existed and probably in greater number, were in fact appalling.
Anonymity doesn't make any "normal person" start spewing death threats and rape threats. The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is just an excuse bad people tell themselves to justify their antisocial behavior.
When I made this post (and for a good time afterward), and I clicked 'parent' of your post it took me to the post with the person talking about the vitriol being appalling.
My response above was written assuming that the intended 'parent' post was the one being linked as the 'parent' at the time.
That post is no longer the parent of your comment, instead the parent is a post which your post actually works as a relatively legitimate reply to.
I am saying this as a way of acknowledging, all my further replies (some of which may have been made after the parent changed, without me noticing) are clearly deserving of down votes in the current context.
She had a affair with a married senior partner who was also a lecherous jerk at her prior job, betraying both her spouse and her fellow cheaters spouse. Then when he, the lecher, was under fire for his treatment of another female subordinate she defended him.
You asked, verbatim, "What the fuck is this?". Parent answered. But somehow, parent is to blame for not answering the rest of your very rhetorical-looking post.
I'm sure that if he were in any way relevant to the conversation, then his affair would come up in conversation. But he's not, so let's not wander down that rabbit hole.
As someone who has only watched this popcorn feast, I have the sense that she was the subject of vitriol primarily for taking actions that people didn't like. Many of the insults may well have targeted her gender, but that is not the same thing at all.
I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.
It seems like the major source of antipathy towards her was the firing of Victoria Taylor, which happened on her watch, but was actually done by a man who is still at the company, and nobody seems to want him fired. It's entirely possible I have some or all of my facts wrong, but this is what I understand to be the case.
The point of leadership is to deal with these sorts of issues, and take those hits when they don't pan out. It's like having your cake and eating it. On the one hand, we use the excuse: "just doing his/her job" or "just following orders", and then on the other hand: "Happened on his/her watch, by a subordinate", as if it makes it okay. The blame needs to be shared (if appropriate), and not shoved around depending on which side we are currently arguing for/against.
That's when most people started hearing about it outside of Reddit, but I guarantee there is been strong hate before any of that happened. And it really does seem gender-based, or at least those are all the primary attacks.
Really? What are the decisions she has made that seem so substantially larger than past Reddit CEO mistakes? Worse than selling to Conde Nast? Worse than closing subreddits for content?
To me the uptick in personal insults seems obvious, and uncorrelated to a long history of questionable decisions by Reddit admins. Although I think her being labelled as a feminist false accuser is as much the reason as her being a woman.
Probably the fact that she's relatively new and seen as an outside by most in the community who wants to "ban behaviour" yet goes after ideas (see: /r/fatpeoplehate drama, while subreddits like /r/coontown and other racist shitholes were allowed to stay). Their stance on brigading that seems to not apply to /r/shitredditsays. People seemingly shadowbanned for speaking their minds. Her lawsuit (that she rightly lost) against her former employer where she claimed her gender was the reason she wasn't promoted?
Pao was the face of reddit as CEO and had to rightly "face the music", not because she's a woman. I find it incredible to see things boiled down to "they hate her cuz she's a gurl".
> I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.
Well, the litmus test can't be simply whether the harassment solely targeted her gender and nothing else. Sexism (and other forms of bigotry) have a more insidious nature to them.
I didn't say there wasn't sexism. I do indeed believe that gendered insults are the result of sexism. I am, however, stating that the genesis of the entire Ellen Pao affair seemed to be about her actions, not her womanhood.
I just think it's important that we don't gloss over the possibility that the level of criticism and outrage could very well have been exaggerated as a result of latent/subconscious sexism.
I think it's much more likely that the amplification of criticism and outrage was catalyzed by her high-visibility public image stemming from the KP trial. She came out looking (IMO) like a vindictive, petty, and greedy person. Whether that's true or not, I suspect that image was then projected onto her role as Reddit's CEO. The kind of insults she got were absolutely driven by some of the most vile and reprehensible expressions of sexism, but I think it was more that Pao was an unsympathetic person who made an easy target for sexists, than that some latent sexism caused otherwise-normal reddit users to turn against her.
I don't think she was responsible for nearly so much of the stuff Reddit reacted negatively to over the course of her tenure as some would think, but I think the primary blame for that perception lies with Reddit's leadership as a whole and their astounding lack of communication to their audience. They knew that Pao had been the subject of a high-visibility lawsuit heavily steeped in social justice implications, which she rather badly lost - it doesn't take a PR genius to think that if you start introducing sweeping social justice-driven changes to your site while she's in office as CEO, people are going to presume that she's the one driving them. That could have been trivially defused by saying "This was a decision made by our board" or "This initiative is something we've been working on for the past 3 years", rather than just sitting by and letting the bogeyman grow and grow.
As another example, as best I can tell, Ohanin let Pao take all the heat for Victoria Taylor's firing, and then clarified that he was the one who made the decision to terminate her only after Pao had resigned. A huge amount of unrest could have been deflected off of Pao if Ohanin had said "Hey, I'm the one that made this decision", but that wasn't said (if I'm wrong, please let me know; the first reference I saw to this admission was timestamped around ~1h ago). In fact, reddit's leadership as a whole was extremely wishy-washy and vague about the whole thing, despite the fact that it upset the volunteer base that makes reddit usable enough to incite mini-revolt.
Leaping to claims of sexism seems lazy and just a little-too-convenient for me. I think that if her husband had been in the CEO role and the same things had happened, given his PR image problems, you'd have seen the same magnitude of criticism and outrage (but then, of course, people would level claims of racism as the cause, which I think would have been equally as wrong).
Sure that's possible and it's likely that there are a lot of misogynists that have participated; but that doesn't make everyone who was critical a misogynist.
> It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman
More like passing off a lack a simple lack of ability at KPCB as gender discrimination, having the temerity to file a meritless suit on that basis, losing it so conclusively, and then further demonstrating her lack of ability at Reddit thereby harming something a lot of people love a lot.
I find that easy to see how that is vitriol-inducing.
That's nonsense. While the expression of disdain for her probably did come forth at times through misogynistic language from some misguided users, it was pretty clear that it was her actions and vision (or lack of a coherent one) that was driving the backlash. Further evidence against the idea that there's a latent misogyny among Reddit's userbase: the firing of a popular female employee is what set all this off (this time at least).
Uhm, how? Although there were lots of trolls just looking to rile people up, a lot of the criticisms about her allegedly snubbing other females for promotions and baseless lawsuits that amounted to the same exact figure her fraud of a husband was being hounded for were perfectly valid. Or are all those forgiven because she has a vagina?
The problem with insults in America is that people confuse sexism for insults that are gender-specific. Unlike anal sex, many insults do not work on any gender.
Many of the insults we men use on each other just don't work on a woman. For example, what would calling a woman a "dickless wonder" even mean?
Similarly, let's say I wanted to insult a guy raised by a gay male couple. It would make no sense telling him "Your mother is a whore".
Skepticism in all things is great, but if it doesn't go both ways (like you're presenting here), then it's not skepticism at all but rather a bunch of preconceived notions about what's going on behind the scenes upon which you are projecting all of this bizarre vitriol. It's great that you are so skeptical of what Reddit management is saying, but you should be equally skeptical about all of this stuff that you're imagining is really going on.
I think the last line may resonate a bit negative (and possibly sexist) with people but I do agree with your larger point of: when do corporations actually tell us the truth about these ousters?
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.
Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman.