Former Reddit CEO: You're All Screwed (Feminist Group post)

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http://gawker.com/former-reddit-ceo-youre-all-screwed-1717901652?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Turns out all that hate turned onto Ellen Pao was misplaced. Big surprise.

Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong is having a goddamn ball this week, bouncing around announcement threads and spilling site secrets to his heart’s content. His latest big reveal: Reddit’s board has been itching to purge the site of users’ precious hate-based subreddits since the beginning. And recently, the only thing stopping them had been... Ellen Pao. Whoops.

Wong posted the illuminating message in response to today’s official announcement that the site isn’t supposed to be a “bastion of free speech.” With the general message being—way to get rid of the only person actually fighting for you, you idiots:

<snip>

the most delicious part of this is that on at least two separate occasions, the board pressed /u/ekjp[5] to outright ban ALL the hate subreddits in a sweeping purge. She resisted, knowing the community, claiming it would be a shitshow. Ellen isn’t some “evil, manipulative, out-of-touch incompetent she-devil” as was often depicted. She was approved by the board and recommended by me because when I left, she was the only technology executive anywhere who had the chops and experience to manage a startup of this size, AND who understood what reddit was all about. As we can see from her post-resignation activity[6] , she knows perfectly well how to fit in with the reddit community and is a normal, funny person - just like in real life - she simply didn’t sit on reddit all day because she was busy with her day job.

Ellen was more or less inclined to continue upholding my free-speech policies. /r/fatpeoplehate[7] was banned for inciting off-site harassment, not discussing fat-shaming. What all the white-power racist-sexist neckbeards don’t understand is that with her at the head of the company, the company would be immune to accusations of promoting sexism and racism: she is literally Silicon Valley’s #1 Feminist Hero, so any “SJWs” would have a hard time attacking the company for intentionally creating a bastion (heh) of sexist/racist content. She probably would have tolerated your existence so long as you didn’t cause any problems -

[MADem]

1. That's absolutely HILARIOUS! Pao was catching so much shit from the

Internet Tough Guys, with all that "Chairman Pao" mocking and snarking--and she was the one standing on the barricades on behalf of the assholes who were excoriating her?

Irony--it's what's for breakfast!!!!!! But hey, those ITGs got what they wanted!!!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/

Content Policy update. AMA Thursday, July 16th, 1pm pst. (self.announcements)
submitted 18 hours ago by spez[A]x6
Hey Everyone,
There has been a lot of discussion lately —on reddit, in the news, and here internally— about reddit’s policy on the more offensive and obscene content on our platform. Our top priority at reddit is to develop a comprehensive Content Policy and the tools to enforce it.
The overwhelming majority of content on reddit comes from wonderful, creative, funny, smart, and silly communities. That is what makes reddit great. There is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don’t have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all.
Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen: These are very complicated issues, and we are putting a lot of thought into it. It’s something we’ve been thinking about for quite some time. We haven’t had the tools to enforce policy, but now we’re building those tools and reevaluating our policy.
We as a community need to decide together what our values are. To that end, I’ll be hosting an AMA on Thursday 1pm pst to present our current thinking to you, the community, and solicit your feedback.
PS - I won’t be able to hang out in comments right now. Still meeting everyone here!

Reddit needs a theme song....

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2. I knew you'd appreciate this.

After that eye-watering thread the other day. I'm glad the former CEO said something, usually Silicon Valley isn't very supportive, especially of women.

In addition to the sexism and racism that came in torrents onto Ellen Pao, I think this reddit "free speech" issue is interesting. Reddit, of course, can set any policy they want, but they experimented with leaving things as open as they could.

Now they are looking at the question--does an internet free-for-all lead to greater, more creative content? Or does the bad shit take over the site and crowd out the people who aren't interested in posting in a toilet?

[MADem]

3. There is a group of vile racists over there who are already whining about how

they will have to leave and go elsewhere--good riddance to bad rubbish, I say....

[MADem]

4. Oh, but wait....there's MORE....!!!!!

There's a lot of bad blood going around Reddit this week — but apparently it hasn't kept Ellen Pao off the site.

As a joke, the former CEO was invited to be an honorary moderator of the /r/casualconversations subreddit — and yesterday, to the mods' surprise and delight, she accepted. "I've lurked here in the past," Pao wrote. "First time commenting. Still haven't posted." From there, the conversation turned to potato chips (Pao prefers Fritos), client apps (she uses Alien Blue for mobile redditing), and animal GIFs. "Someone sent me an awesome baby hedgehog gif yesterday, so that's on my mind today," Pao wrote in the thread. "The past few days have been a little less casual than I'd like. Right now, I'm just relaxing.

As CEO, Pao's experiences commenting on Reddit were often met with mass downvoting campaigns and outpourings of abuse, but her turn through /r/casualconversations was surprisingly casual, inspiring newfound affection for the ousted leader. "I just want to say that I am sorry for jumping on the hate train and upvoting all those hurtful posts," wrote a user named awesterdam. "Seeing you make these small talks made me realise you are human and have feelings too. I wish you well in your future endeavours." The sentiment isn't limited to comments: as of press time, the top thread in /r/casualconversations is a post demanding Reddit apologize to Pao. Pao seemed to be forgiving towards the community as well. "So many people sent positive messages or apologized sincerely that it made up for all the negative stuff," she wrote.


http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/15/8974651/ellen-pao-reddit-user-casual-conversation

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5. Hahahahaha.

That's awesome.