An old team at reddit

1ヶ月前

[deleted]

RambleMan · 1ヶ月前

Welcome back, Steve.

While I doubt we'll ever find out exactly what changes were a direct command from Ellen, the one that I found most curious was demanding all employees move to San Francisco. To me, one of the successes of reddit was how all of these amazingly talented people from across the globe could work together without HAVING to be together. With a global reach for staffing, you're able to have the best team possible, but by demanding geographics, you're limiting yourself to whose willing to move/deal with the cost of living in San Francisco, etc.

I understand that face-to-face working/meeting is different than virtual, but where I work, because of geography, we simply can't be all be in the same place, and that's just the reality of it. There is no way to congregate everyone. We trust everyone to perform their roles, have a reporting process and meet regularly through teleconference and video conference.

When reddit announced/commanded that everyone must move to San Francisco to remain employed I saw that as the end to reddit as it was. Even if everybody moved, you'd have a lot of people who didn't want to and were leaving their homes/families/lives. Having happy employees is more important than a punch clock/physical presence, especially for a virtual company. Yes, there are SOME jobs that should be physically together (the physical servers of reddit are somewhere, so theoretically someone who needs to be switch things on and off needs to be near them), but reddit functions 24/7, so having people spread across the globe/time zones would benefit the operation.

I know this isn't an AMA, but I'm curious whether you, Steve, are going to step back and evaluate all of reddit and consider making big moves that may look like going backwards, because that worked.

I also appreciate that we don't/can't know why /u/chooter was terminated, but if the rumours of her disagreeing with the changes of her role are the root cause, I would hope that you'd be open enough to consider that someone whose been in the role should be listened to for their opinions. I'm not suggesting you hire /u/chooter back, but if the reason for her termination was a disagreement with someone who has now stepped down as CEO, it would mean a lot to the users if /u/chooter was given the option to return - let her decide. If I was Victoria, I'd consider it, but I'd be wanting a firm personal employment contract that protects me from termination without severance unless I was stealing from the company or something. You pay people to be good at what they do and think/contribute, not to be drones and do what you say. If you want drones, fire everyone and outsource overseas.

Another voice seemingly lost in all of this is /u/kickme444 who brought such positive energy and commitment to the reddit userbase. Truly, the reason I created my account and stopped lurking was to be part of the first Secret Santa. If you check the age of my account, you'll see it was created within days of the first Secret Santa campaign, run out of Dan's home, for free, all to bring some joy to the world. Again, I doubt we'll know why Dan was terminated, but seeing that reddit killed the store connected to redditgifts, which presumably was a source of income, I can only guess that reddit Inc. was cutting ties with anybody who didn't agree 100% with what they were being told to do. Same as my comment above - Dan was hired and redditgifts bought from him to contribute to the community/organization/company, so if he was terminated for having opinions on what he created, reddit is the loser in the situation. Dan will have no trouble finding another job, but the chaos reddit created in his life by forcing a move and terminating him is disgraceful.

DuhTrutho · 1ヶ月前

This is indeed amazing news, however, Everyone needs to calm down and understand something more important.

Ellen Pao is just one of the problems. Advance Publications is the company that bought Reddit and makes a lot of the rules. Sam Newhouse and the board of Advance Publications are the ones who you should keep an eye on as he is in charge of things over in Advance Publications. Remember that they assign the board members who decides what happens here on Reddit and who to hire for Reddit as well. Aaron Swartz, one of the founders of Reddit, hated working for Condé Nast so much that he stopped going into work and was eventually fired. Eventually Reddit was picked up by Condé Nast's parent company Advance Publications.

Ellen was simply an interim CEO.

Suppose you are the young Reddit and you are badly in need of cash. A venture capitalist comes and offers to invest in reddit, the one condition is that you must pay the profits at the end of 10 years. There was no certainty that Reddit would turn, so the VC was taking a huge risk, not surprisingly they also make huge profits. With reddit it should be somewhere around 1000% profits.

So the VC wants the maximum return for their money at the end of the 10 year term. This means the investment must be maxed out in value and then sold. Ohanian and co. knew that would happen and when. They knew exactly as they signed the papers 10 years ago.

Reddit finally gets bought out and sold because people have hopes that they can monetize Reddit, but doing so is hard. Pao only enters the picture after everyone with a bit of sense has taken their money and bailed out. She is inconsequential. Reddit is now owned by the same company that owns Vogue and Bride magazine. You can figure out what is in their horoscope.

Pao begins converting these in Reddit to try and make things more friendly for investors, such as banning FPH among other subreddits that could be found to be offensive. But it was offensive moreover to specific groups of people, namely extreme feminists and the more family oriented types. Although many people hate to admit it, Twitter has a very large group of extremist feminists going strong that have the capability to destroy people such as nobel prize winners like Tim Hunt for obvious jokes. It's made all the more obvious that Pao was catering to feminists by leaving /r/shitredditsays untouched for the brigading that they continue to accomplish by posting links directly to posts. If it was in the name of hate, you've got to better explain to me why /r/coontown is still here as well.

In any case, Reddit is a culture of allowing people to post and say what they want much of the time, allow any type of ideology to break that culture should be frowned upon. It's not just radical feminism, it's the idea of family friendly entertainment and cutting out less popular belief systems.

It makes good business sense to try and appeal to the radical feminists that seem to have so much power nowadays, and eliminating offensive subreddits also encourages those who are worried about sensitivity to actually invest. Reddit's part of a business after all, it just makes sense to try and make money in any way possible.

All you have to do is look at the trends that Advance Publications' publications are trying to set in each of the magazines and you should be able to determine where they wish to steer Reddit.

Just make sure that you don't believe that this is the final victory or anything. I'm not saying that the company is evil, only that obviously ideology can be passed down the line from company owners and it's up to people here to make sure that we don't allow things to go to shit.

Edit: Okay, lots of words. Obligatory plz no shadowban plz. Ah, and I should clarify that calling out radical feminism isn't synonymous with misogyny in the same way that calling out radical Islamist doesn't make me a racist who hates all Arabs.

TL;DR: You've heard Ellen Pao is stepping down. You haven't heard that policies that were set in place while she was here are being reversed. Don't believe you've won or that things will change yet, stay vigilant and be sure that you always state what you will and won't stand for.

Edit: Numbers

jmnugent · 1ヶ月前

/u/spez ,

Due to the length/# of comments on this thread,.. I haven't had time to judiciously read down through all of them. Please forgive me if any of my comments are duplicates of what's already been said.

And I'll also be honest in saying,.. I don't know much about you. I've been on Reddit for 6 years,.. but obviously nowhere near the time/capacity you have. I'm in no place to tell you how to do your job,.. but I wanted to give my feedback anyways.

1.) I've said it in other threads,.. but I genuinely hope the controversies over the past couple weeks are taken as a sign to the Reddit Admins that their Userbase is deeply passionate about Reddit. You can look back through the comment-count in postings to /r/announcements and definitely see which threads are pushing 10,000+ or 20,000+ ) You guys should take that NOT as a negative, but as a positive sign,.. and brainstorm creative ways to recognize and harness that energy. No matter what problem (perceived or real) you're having -- your Users are your best resource. As long as you do right by them,.. you'll be fine. Keep it real and make it a point (yourself) to regularly engage with Users at their level. Look for ways to unexpectedly delight Reddit Users. One of the things I would do as Reddit CEO -- would be to occasionally drop-in/visit a random sub-reddit just to say "Hi", ask questions/contribute or just remind them how you value their contributions. Explore and Interact with little corners of Reddit you don't normally visit (and whom may not expect a visit by the Reddit CEO). I think that would be pretty awesome.

2.) I'm disturbed and concerned about various comments made about "increasing the # of Users on Reddit". I sincerely hope you guys aren't trying to do a "quantity over quality" mistake. If you're focusing solely/specifically on "bringing more Users to Reddit" -- then I think that's going to be a giant fail. (or another giant controversy). Forget about User-growth,.. and simply focus on QUALITY. User-growth will come as a nice side-benefit as long as you simply take care/foster the great things on Reddit that already exist (things like Reddit Gift Exchange,etc). Internet forums don't become a "destination of choice" simply because of the # of Users. People are drawn to quality content and a quality community.

3.) I know you (and Deimorz and others on the Admin team) have stated (and are actively working) on improving Mod Tools, refining and clarifying the Content Policy and other improvements. I think this is great (and long overdue). I hope you'll engage the overall community in every step of that process,.. and be fearless in the face of feedback. I firmly believe the Reddit community is pretty forgiving as long as you're making efforts to constantly communicate/converse with them. Lack of communication is what fuels confusion, feelings of exclusion and/or bitterness/divisiveness. I think we've all seen examples recently of that.

I love Reddit. Not afraid or ashamed to say it. I think there are already numerous User-created/sustained ecosystems within Reddit that make Reddit great. Those became great because of genuine, natural, organic and bottom-up effort & contributions by everyone involved in them. That's where the power of Reddit lives.. As long as you don't lose sight of that,.. I think the potential of Reddit will continue to grow and be strong.

spez · 1ヶ月前

Ok, Hi!

It's Steve. I'm super excited to be back.

It's been a crazy day. I'll be spending the next hour or so in the this thread answering any questions, and then I need to do some serious bonding with the team here.

We've got a lot of work to do. Fortunately, I've got five years of ideas stacked up, and I'm looking forward to getting to work.

edit: taking off for a bit. Lots to do here!

edit2: I'm going to do an Office Hours / AMA tomorrow morning 10am pst. I think we need some quality time together, reddit.

sewebster87 · 1ヶ月前

This is such a huge placation. They brought in Ellen to make really unpopular changes, and now they are bringing back Steve to have everyone believe Reddit is going "back to normal". There's no turning back from the size this site has become, and feigning that we can do anything with it other than move to a new, smaller site is just silly. Reddit will continue to exist despite it's users being upset, because it's reached a cultural critical mass. Reddit is popular because it's popular, and for no other reason.

I don't mean to be negative, but seriously...this was planned. Steve got a ton of money, and won't be able to make any changes without the Board's approval.....just like Ellen.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

bjos144 · 1ヶ月前

1) Is there any chance Victoria will be returning?

2) What is happening with that 50 million dollars that was supposed to go back into the community?

3) Do you feel that the influx of monetary influence has caused some of these, how shall we say, growing pains?

4) Are you concerned about the sudden talk of alternatives to reddit, ie voat.co?

5) Are you concerned about history repeating itself like digg.com?

6) What lessons did you learn from digg and how will you make different choices to avoid a mass exodus?

7) What's your favorite cat related content you've seen this week?

iktnl · 1ヶ月前

I'll be completely buried under the comments, nobody will read this, but here I go.

Pao just did what the reddit board wanted. She couldn't possibly have made those changes herself and have nobody disagree with it. Reddit is getting commercialized, or at least, changing how they are getting their money. And that's okay. Better communication would have been nice.

Ellen Pao stepping down now will change nothing, unless the board miraculously un-fires the people who have been let go, reinstates banned subreddits and members. However, since nothing in the announcement nor comments points to this being a possibility, it's very likely that the changes Pao took flak for will just stay there.

From a business and strategy perspective, this has been a great move, lots of people bought it and jumped on the hate bandwagon, but they completely lost track of the real thing happening here, and that's the structure of reddit being changed.

I'm not opposing this. I'm just in for the smaller subreddits which have an awesome community and a website has got to find ways to survive, and it can't just forever lean on karma and reddit gold. The way it happened just doesn't seem like fair play at all. But that's all gut feeling.

Gideon_Drake · 1ヶ月前

Holy shit, I found an announcement early. Hi mom!

In all seriousness, anyone could have predicted this would happen. Pao was called an interim CEO for a reason. She made a bunch of unpopular changes and provided a wonderful strawman for everyone to point at and say "we did it, Reddit!" The real question is, are the unpopular decisions she made going to stick around? Are the "progressive" changes promised to the mods actually going to occur?

Edit: FFS everybody, I get it. But I aint changing shit, I'm wondering how many more people will inform me of my poor choice of terms.

Badoit1778 · 1ヶ月前

for history's sake,

11,810 points (98% upvoted) 12,302 votes

and just got the 7th gold

as the clock hit 30 minutes in.

edit -

40 minutes

14,922 points (98% upvoted) 15,544 votes and 7474 comments. 10 golds to the op

50 minutes

17,431 points (98% upvoted) 18,157 votes and 8870 comments. 13 golds to the op.

60 minutes 19,754 points (98% upvoted) 20,578 votes and 10017 comments. 15 golds to the op

fin

10 hours, '6154 points', 97% upvoted, 19883 comments, 48 golds to the op.

TitsAlmighty · 1ヶ月前

It sounds like Pao served her role as the interim CEO perfectly. People were supposed to hate her so she could make changes the board of directors wanted that they knew some users would hate. Then the white knight new CEO sweeps in to save the day and everyone is happy. They also promise to continuo Pao's mission to make this a safe place so that should be fun.

OzzyGeelv99 · 1ヶ月前

Dont worry buddy, I'll help in NOT letting this get buried..

[–] /u/OnyxKnight 7 points 41 minutes ago

I know this will be buried and that's fine because I just need to say this. How delusional can you guys be? I love reddit. I sincerely do. It's exactly what I want in a website and 90% of my computer time is spent on it to some extent. But do you guys not care about us? Do you seriously think so little of us that you'd rather appear to be a 'professional' business than to just be straight with us? Death threats are not cool. But reddit has been very extremely vocal in saying, " WE DO NOT WANT TO GO THIS DIRECTION." " DON'T CHANGE WHAT REDDIT IS" And that is what Ellen was trying to do. She was trying to change reddit. I'm not trying to say she is a horrible person or even a horrible CEO. But she tried to do things her community hated, and you guys just ignore us. I mean hell she went and talked in an interview with the NYT about tons of major subreddits went down BEFORE talking to her community. And then even had the gall to say that the majority of users didn't care? And then in this statement you almost spit in our face and say this new CEO is going to continue her work? Steve, I know nothing about you, I've only been here a few years. But I think I speak for many when I say, we just want Reddit. We don't want you to try to moderate our speech. We don't want you to make reddit a completely safe place. We don't want you to force morals in our face. We want Reddit to be as open and all inclusive it can be within the realms of law. The internet will always have shitty people on the internet, and reddit will always have shitty people on the internet no matter how hard you try to stop it. But I'd rather have them, then a completely delusional reddit team trying to change reddit and removing all the amazing things it had. Like firing perhaps the two admins who had done more than anyone in giving reddit a positive community image, and then ignoring the outrage held by the community. I'm not asking for details, I'm not asking for answers, I just want you guys to understand, that WE are what's important on this fucking site. You guys are not. I'm sorry if that hurts. But the redditors are 95% of what makes this site, amazing. And I honestly don't feel like you guys feel that way. In fact just reading this post, I feel as though you guys look down on us and don't appreciate us at all. And I've felt that way for a long time. Oh well. My rants over. I wish you the best of luck Steve, I sincerely hope you put Reddit back on track and don't continue Ellen's work. And Ellen, we might have disagreed on what Reddit should be, I wish you luck too.

LamaofTrauma · 1ヶ月前

Well, now that you threw Pao under the bus, is Steve the next on the chopping block when you guys do absolutely nothing different from what's been pissing off your userbase lately? I mean, you gotta know Pao only got shit because being a CEO paints a giant target on your head when your company fucks up.

We are thankful for Ellen’s many contributions to reddit and the technology industry generally.

Ha! You're a funny guy.

She brought focus to chaos

Proving she was the wrong person for the job...

She brought a face to reddit that changed perceptions

By managing to keep reddit afloat because none of it's competitors could handle the influx of wannabe reddit refugees. Do you really want to say she did something good when her most notable accomplishment was crashing pretty much every reddit competitor by sending them WAY too many users?

a pioneer for women in the tech industry.

When will you people let this myth die? Are people contractually obligated to perpetuate this crap, or what? She struck a blow for women in tech much in the same way that the Rolling Stone rape hoax struck a blow for Rolling Stone's credibility.

kickme444 · 1ヶ月前

Hey Steve,

We met a long time ago but I’m sure you don’t remember. I created redditgifts and was let go from reddit a month ago. I wonder if you have any intention of keeping redditgifts around in the future?

nameless_minion · 1ヶ月前

continuing the work Ellen started to drive this forward

Could you elaborate more on which goals or projects were started by Ellen and will be picked up by Steve.

Thanks!

VirtualAnarchy · 1ヶ月前

I knew Ellen Pao would step down, she was only the face people could punch while the higher ups made unpopular changes to reddit. People saw this coming from a mile away, anyone who considers this a 'victory' needs to look at what is actually changing, which isn't the policies introduced under Pao.

spez · 1ヶ月前

First priorities:

Get to know the team here
Make a clear Content Policy
Ship some mod tool improvements

edit: markdown confusing as shit

Deimorz · 1ヶ月前

I've made a few posts about mod tools this week, here's one from today that links to the previous ones: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/3cu18x/rmodsupports_first_week_what_we_worked_on_and/

Dacvak · 1ヶ月前

Hey Steve, it's Dacvak. We briefly met a long time ago when I first got hired. Please let me know if you have any positions open for Community Manager, as I would love to return once I'm healthy enough to do so. :)

opticon · 1ヶ月前

Called it.

As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. 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.

We're not your children, don't chide us like we're all guilty of something. This is your announcement?

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.

You're not my real Dad. The lessons to be learned are on your side of the table, not ours. If the Reddit administration cannot learn to balance monetization and transparency, it may be a popular website but it will never be a truly great platform.

Steve’s great challenge as CEO will be continuing the work Ellen started to drive this forward.

Good luck with that. You can't engineer a better society. Many have tried. We'll do what we do and you'll try to find a way to make your website look more appealing to whomever it is you're trying to impress. If you go down this road she put you on, Reddit will wither on the vine.

Ellen asked me to point out that the sweeping majority of redditors didn’t do this, and many were incredibly supportive. Although the incredible power of the Internet is the amplification of voices, unfortunately sometimes those voices are hateful.

Ellen was a fraud, a liar, a bullshit artist. The sweeping majority of Redditors don't make the content of Reddit happen either. So that annoying little 1% of users and moderators are the ones you should try not to alienate. (See what I did there?)

Looks like your closing note takes up about half your comment. Pretty important closing note. And it's about Ellen and chiding your user base like children. This'll be a hoot. Instead of throwing her under the bus and restoring old Reddit values, you just brought in an old CEO and hoped no one would notice that you basically won't be changing anything. You can't help yourselves, can you? You're unable to make an announcement without telling us how awful we all are and how much in control of the internets you're going to be.

OnyxKnight · 1ヶ月前

I know this will be buried and that's fine because I just need to say this.

How delusional can you guys be? I love reddit. I sincerely do. It's exactly what I want in a website and 90% of my computer time is spent on it to some extent. But do you guys not care about us? Do you seriously think so little of us that you'd rather appear to be a 'professional' business than to just be straight with us? Death threats are not cool. But reddit has been very extremely vocal in saying, " WE DO NOT WANT TO GO THIS DIRECTION." " DON'T CHANGE WHAT REDDIT IS" And that is what Ellen was trying to do. She was trying to change reddit. I'm not trying to say she is a horrible person or even a horrible CEO. But she tried to do things her community hated, and you guys just ignore us. I mean hell she went and talked in an interview with the NYT about tons of major subreddits went down BEFORE talking to her community. And then even had the gall to say that the majority of users didn't care?

And then in this statement you almost spit in our face and say this new CEO is going to continue her work? Steve, I know nothing about you, I've only been here a few years. But I think I speak for many when I say, we just want Reddit. We don't want you to try to moderate our speech. We don't want you to make reddit a completely safe place. We don't want you to force morals in our face. We want Reddit to be as open and all inclusive it can be within the realms of law. The internet will always have shitty people on the internet, and reddit will always have shitty people on the internet no matter how hard you try to stop it. But I'd rather have them, then a completely delusional reddit team trying to change reddit and removing all the amazing things it had. Like firing perhaps the two admins who had done more than anyone in giving reddit a positive community image, and then ignoring the outrage held by the community. I'm not asking for details, I'm not asking for answers, I just want you guys to understand, that WE are what's important on this fucking site. You guys are not. I'm sorry if that hurts. But the redditors are 95% of what makes this site, amazing. And I honestly don't feel like you guys feel that way. In fact just reading this post, I feel as though you guys look down on us and don't appreciate us at all. And I've felt that way for a long time.

Oh well. My rants over. I wish you the best of luck Steve, I sincerely hope you put Reddit back on track and don't continue Ellen's work. And Ellen, we might have disagreed on what Reddit should be, I wish you luck too.

Edit - Not sure how I should feel about getting gold on this. But thanks for the kindness whoever!

neurofluxation · 1ヶ月前

Steve.... Why are you moderator for /r/cannibals ?
edit: well, this blew up and I can be happy about gold again! Thanks!

DOUBLEBOSSSPRINGSMAP · 1ヶ月前

Wasn't the default sub blackout due to mod's years of frustration with reddit admins? Like years before Pao joined on board? Or are we just gonna pretend that Pao didn't get a lot of misdirected hatred from the blackout

Drunken_Economist · 1ヶ月前

I'm so excited to have Steve back with us. He helped build this platform that has been such a huge part of my life for the better part of a decade . . . I can't think of anyone better for the next decade

ShellBard · 1ヶ月前

I watched this post go over 15,000 votes, but now its back down to under 10,000. I recall this is an automatic function of Reddit, but is there any way to see the actual votes on a post, and not this market adjusted version?

PrussianBleu · 1ヶ月前

"Ellen! Ellen! Ellen! Oh wait, that's not Ellen.. Steve! Steve!"

Edit: gold x4?! Thanks!

raldi · 1ヶ月前

Finally! It's time for reddit to go back to its origins.

My suggestions:

1. Bring back /r/reddit.com
2. Turn off all other subreddits
3. Remove bloat, e.g., the commenting feature

Edit: And oh my god, how could I forget:

4. Port reddit back to Lisp
5. Disable selfposts

Mooshington · 1ヶ月前

I'm scared. There's no special color around this person's name to make me feel secure.

Edit: Now there is. I'm all cozy now.

Kaminaaaaa · 1ヶ月前

Just gonna copy and paste a great point that a user on voat made about this.

Here it is:

We did NOT win shit here: When a company decides to make sudden and unpopular changes it hires an "interim" CEO to do the dirty work. They take all the heat and stick around just long enough to implement new policy and fire people.

Then the "interim" CEO leaves suddenly, with a bag of cash and disappears. The community feels victorious. Yay! We win! They will now be more likely to accept the new management that are all still ass-hats, but less so than the "interim" CEO they dubbed Hitler. And after some kind of outreach bologna the storm settles and tomorrow is a new day.

Mission accomplished.

Freddie_the_spider · 1ヶ月前

Many of the comments make the hate for Ellen Pao start to look like a witch hunt. I don't believe one single person can have had the influence nor the responsibility to make all the decisions that have harvested such hate.
Then again this is often what happens. Someone is made out to be the scapegoat and hate it shifted toward that person thus removing focus from the true problems.

DannySpud2 · 1ヶ月前

Step 1: Hire a controversial person as a figurehead for your company.
Step 2: Use said person to make unpopular changes that strengthen the company and attract investors and advertisers but annoy the community. Save the most controversial ones until last.
Step 3: Make the final changes in a very public way under the guise of transparency. Use the noise this generates as publicity for the changes to attract investors and advertisers.
Step 4: Fire a popular member of the community, when no one really notices this fire the most popular member of the community you can find.
Step 5: Enjoy another burst of publicity for your investor-friendly changes.
Step 6: Finally step down, letting the community think they won.
Step 7: ??????
Step 8: Profit.

cucumber_breath · 1ヶ月前

Pao was not the only issue with Reddit, simply the face. Let's make sure we help to change this site for the better.

DaHolk · 1ヶ月前

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.

[1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.

I wrote this in the past, and I will write it again and again. The very "rude" tone on the internet is NOT just because we are anonymously writing. It also exists, because people feel the need to substitute with harsh words the OTHER signs of heavy displeasure that we use in day to day life, and are used to.

One can't make an actual angry face, so people substitute that with harsher language. One can't communicate with body language, so people compensate with harsher language, and one can't communicate via infliction or volume, and all the other little things that makes our voice communicate besides just words, so people compensate with words.

The results are words, that would never be acceptable in actual in person communication, but there, it would already be coupled with the other things, and then would be "on top".

Which means to create the same "range" of expressive emotions JUST with letters as with normal talking communication means increasing the range of words. And quite frankly people who get hurt easily do not account for this, and just take the words, and act like someone actually talked to them like that, and THEN add what they think that person would look and sound like on top (and they might very well be wrong).

The language on the web, is the result of increasing the "volume" until they get taken serious, to the point where it is unquestionable that they are angry. But it doesn't mean what they wrote should be taken literal, or as something that person would say face to face. And not just because they would be afraid of repercussions. Partially because doing it would be unnecessary.

The complaining of a certain type of people who seem utterly new to the web, while failing to account for fundamental differences in how this communication is limited and different is like a person just nilly willy moving to a different country, and then getting a percecution complex because everybody is angry all the time, just because they fully don't understand that this is just how the local language there sounds, and that their interpretation is biased based on THEIR language, instead of an honest representation of the local mood. The fact that the web uses their language in writing is only a minor difference.

Ellen asked me to point out that the sweeping majority of redditors didn’t do this, and many were incredibly supportive. Although the incredible power of the Internet is the amplification of voices, unfortunately sometimes those voices are hateful.

And I believe an actual majority would fall very much in between. And I find the dichotomy and resulting defending of bad faith decisions very disconcerting.

It might be true that a majority didn't give 2 shits about what other people were angry about, but to me that often is also the kind of majority that is "always" fine with sycophantic brown nosing, until the same mode of decision making hits something that they can relatably be angry about losing.

And honestly, I find the post in it's entirety confusing, too the point that I can't determine anymore whether sacking her was JUST a placating move, and the things she had to take the brunt for will actually keep on happening, or whether this move is an actual show of replacing key personal that had a bad influence.

See? this happens when we write ambiguously. This kind of confusion doesn't really happen if someone writes like a raging 14 year old on xbox live.

stillSmotPoker1 · 1ヶ月前

How about stop allowing the biased SRS'er getting to break all the rules. They are the shit storm from the beginning. Never met a more hateful group, they should be put them up there with internet terrorists. They ran amok on reddit, they were allowed to break every rule. They were allowed to say lies, slander people, Dox people, go nuts banning people, hostile take overs of subreddits and just threaten people on their jobs, at home, and on the web. They are the main cause on many many shitstorms and they have infiltrated the admins.

xiaodre · 1ヶ月前

as part of the redddit community, please let me offer my visions, er, vision of where we need to go. the internet needs more cats, more pictures of cats. it doesn't have nearly enough. so please let me put my little slip of paper with a suggestion on it into the box where these little slips of paper with suggestions on them go into it.

please post more pictures of cats, and we need resources and manpower from reddit devoted to this. more cats. thank you for listening to your userbase.

more cats on the internet. thanks again.

snorlz · 1ヶ月前

I still feel that it is unwise to put Alexis in a position of such power, given how he was as responsible for the Victoria/blackout stuff as Ellen, if not more, and his popcorn comment still shows that he doesnt really care about the community in my mind. Yeah, hes done a lot to try and make up for that comment, but that was only after everyone chewed him out for it and could entirely be damage control.

forscience2 · 1ヶ月前

How did you find your job as CEO? I can't find anywhere to apply for as a CEO on indeed.com

culman13 · 1ヶ月前

Hi Al Harrington from Al Harrington's pitchfork emporium. As an unwanted result of a CEO stepping down, I am currently overstocked on all types of pitch forks and I'm passing the savings onto youuuuuu.

mrheh · 1ヶ月前

He's a very Eye opening post I found on voat. "We did NOT win shit here:

When a company decides to make sudden and unpopular changes it hires an "interim" CEO to do the dirty work. They take all the heat and stick around just long enough to implement new policy and fire people.

Then the "interim" CEO leaves suddenly, with a bag of cash and disappears. The community feels victorious. Yay! We win! They will now be more likely to accept the new management that are all still ass-hats, but less so than the "interim" CEO they dubbed Hitler. And after some kind of outreach bologna the storm settles and tomorrow is a new day.

Mission accomplished.

luciferoverlondon · 1ヶ月前

The position of "interim CEO" of any organization may as well be called "scapegoat". They get someone disposable to come in, make a bunch of changes they know are going to be unpopular, and then have that person resign (with full compensation package) in the face of the backlash they know will be coming. Then a new CEO steps up, keeps all the unpopular changes in place but doesn't take any criticism for it and proceeds as planned. It's Business Management 101. This won't lead to anything different, it's just a ploy to distract the angry user base.

SupaFurry · 1ヶ月前

As a permanent CEO? Or are you guys temping it again?

donemythyme · 1ヶ月前

For what it is worth, I appreciate the clarity that reddit is providing on the changes. I never had any issue with Ms. Pao or her decisions, but I did have an issue with her/or reddit's lack of explanation on any of the changes.

I love this site and I love what's here and I don't think it's ruined but I DO think it stinks if we, the community, aren't clued in to what is going on and why. Again, I don't know if that was even something Pao did--but the company should be aware that it bothers a good portion of us and, worse yet, it bothers even those of us who are not cretins and who would never threatened anyone or be repulsive.

Thanks! Looking forward to the downvotes, I guess.

TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK · 1ヶ月前

Friday afternoon, eh? Someone took a PR class in college!

Nuskagogo · 1ヶ月前

I'm pretty young, and I don't know a lot about the logistics of this site, what it takes to run it, what goes into running it, the costs, I just don't know that much about it. What I do know, is that you can be the CEO of Reddit without fucking up everything Reddit stands for.

Ellen did some really shitty things, and then refused to communicate with the community to fix the things she did wrong. It is not that we cannot be compassionate, I can understand where Ellen was coming from with the banning of subreddits and the cleaning up of the community, but both of them were handled in such a shitty way. She didn't think about the backlash that there would be, and she outright refused to even try to fix any of it, until now. Her leaving was the best way to fix it, as she was never cut out to be the CEO of any kind of free speech community. If you were so closely involved with Ellen, instead of being sickened by what you saw being written, you should have said "Holy shit Ellen, what the fuck are you doing, don't fucking do that." Ellen may have been a little compassionate, but even that's a stretch, and she definitely wasn't authentic.

I'm glad to see Steve back. The site was good under his supervision, which is honestly, all we can ask for in this community. We just want a stable, straight line, normality. Welcome back.

HemiDemiSemiYetti · 1ヶ月前

As much as I'm sure Ellen is a very astute businesswoman, I don't know why she was ever given the job in the first place.

"[Ellen] brought focus to chaos" - She fired a valued member of the community for no apparently-decent reason, which sparked chaotic outrage in the community.

"[Ellen] drove growth" - It seemed like many long-time users were considering leaving the site because of her 'scorched earth' policy when it came to managing staff. I've stuck with the site largely because of the quality of the science AMAs, and she destroyed valuable relationships which upheld that when she fired Victoria.

"[Ellen] is a pioneer for women in the tech industry" - She sued Kleiner Perkins for wrongful dismissal (allegedly caused by gender discrimination), but lost the case because the jury found that her performance at the company wasn't sufficient to warrant promotion (her role required promotion to perpetuate employment). Furthermore, she had an affair with one of the employees she accused of discrimination (he was married), so it's not exactly like the didn't aggravate the gender issue.

All of that comes across as selfish hijacking of REAL gender discrimination issues, to try and claw back a job that the company had every right to fire her from in the first place. That in turn tarnishes the reputation of equal-rights advocacy, because it perpetuates the false rebuke that women hide behind gender discrimination when they under-perform.

Obviously death threats and other personal attacks are completely inappropriate, and it's noble of Ellen to acknowledge that this doesn't represent the general Reddit community. But she was absolutely the wrong person for the job, and the community, and she HAS done damage to Reddit's reputation that may take a long time to fix (not just with users, but also with some scientists). We are very fortunate to see the back of her, and this serves as a shining example of how democracy can achieve great things when power becomes otherwise corrupted.

In fact, it's probably quite fortunate that the public reacted so vociferously to her appointment, because otherwise she might file another discrimination lawsuit (this time against Reddit), claiming that she was fired for failing to meet unreasonable goals. That might sound a bit harsh, but it's EXACTLY the same thing she accused Kleiner Perkins of doing.

DaneelR · 1ヶ月前

Well done, but /r/conspiracy predicted Ellen Pao would have been released after introducing the changes and firing the two mods.

She was just a scapegoat after all. You can even start feeling sympathetic towards her, because she was most likely unaware of the deal.

cynoclast · 1ヶ月前

I was an ardent opponent of Pao aver since I read this glorious exposé of her shenanigans which exposed her as a toxic, sexist, lying, greedy manipulator.

I am not, and have not made death threats or participated in any death threats or some of the more tasteless insults tossed her way. It was never needed, just exposing her actions was enough, in my view.

But now that she's done what could be irreparable damage to reddit (Voat received over 100,000 new accounts the day FPH was banned, and untold numbers during the blackout), are you going to make any attempt to undo any of the damage she caused, /u/spez?

I've been here for over six years, gleefully participated in the first several secret santa events, and been a moderator of a middling sized sub for longer than Ellen Pao had heard of reddit, and even made it into /r/CenturyClub (oddly because of a comment detailing Ellen Pao's past transgressions). But I won't stick around if you guys aren't committed to the spirit of reddit as opposed to a ridiculous 'safe space' where /r/ShitRedditSays is allowed brigade with impunity, but a sub with 150,000 highly active, content contributing users is banned because of a miniscule handful of alleged harassment.

A few questions the answers or lack thereof will likely influence my decision to refocus on reddit, or continue vigorously helping voat eat your lunch:

Are you going to reinstate salary negotiations as part of the hiring process? This was a doubly sexist policy from the outset.
Are you going to cease and desist "weeding out candidates" who don't agree with what is honestly a SJW opinion of diversity? This is going to cost you top talent, because a lot of people simply don't care. And the #1 criteria for hiring, especially in the tech industry is talent.
Are you going to unban FPH? Censorship is full of suck and fail.

For now at least, /r/Snacks is staying dark in protest.

Would you like to know more?

originalpyro · 1ヶ月前

Put this right at the top of the list of things I thought wouldn't be happening anytime soon

elpekardo · 1ヶ月前

But seriously, when has a tech company ever brought back their founder named Steve and succeeded?

badmeinberger · 1ヶ月前

If the reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion

This is a weird way to word it. Why are these something you need to balance between? They're not opposing forces. Hell, I would take that further and argue that they are necessary components of one-another. Compassion is authenticity.

Hell who am I kidding, I'm at the bottom of 15000 comments, nobody's gonna read this.

1010x · 1ヶ月前

Finally a mature decision.

Still, I have suspicions that it was all just a big plan to shift all the hate on Ellen Pao for making decisions which were coming "from the top".

EMC2_trooper · 1ヶ月前

Welcome back Steve!

N8CCRG · 1ヶ月前

Well, now who is reddit going to scapegoat with all of their angst?

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