No one is "reducing" anything.

Altman is not justifying the arbitrary bans (or any Reddit admin shenanigans) here, that is not the topic of this sentence. He is talking strictly about one dangerous activity that gets offenders banned: death threats, which Ellen Pao (the human at the other end) received.

We don't know why Pao went out. We can suspect it was the backlash (more likely), or disagreements with the board [0] but we can suspect.

But that does nothing to make her opposition entirely legitimate, when at its strongest it was hijacked by namecalling, cyber-bullying, and yes, threats to Pao's life. The subset of Redditors who did this deserve to be told how shitty it is. The remaining, legitimate opposition should recognize the distinction.

[0] - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/technology/ellen-pao-reddi...

> We don't know why Pao went out.

Why don't you believe her when she says it was a disagreement with the board over the future of reddit?

"We don't know" when the person in question is saying "this is why" is not very respectful.

I understand your point. In the announcement over at Reddit, people have noted how much of a textbook PR move this is looking like, so I'm assuming the "this is why" is equally calculated and not the whole picture.

However, you're right. The two reasons are not mutually exclusive.

Maybe she left after disagreeing with the board about how to respond to the backlash. Reddit could have easily nuked every account that disrespected and/or threatened Ms. Pao. But that would have been a different Reddit.

> No one is "reducing" anything.

Do you see another reference to the overwhelming opposition inside the user base? Anything in the vein of "the mounting opposition convinced us that there's no point in fighting our users"?

Because from what I read in the announcement, the opposition is presented as a vocal, hateful and criminal minority that should absolutely not be mistaken for the "sweeping majority" that was "incredibly supportive" of the CEO.

Calling her "Chairman Pao" is racist, but moreso, reductive.

Even Pao admits it's likely because her name rhymes well.

Reddit has ALWAYS loved irreverent and even incredibly offensive puns.

Redditors would be calling her Chairman Pao even if she was well loved just for humor value.

https://www.reddit.com/r/yishansucks

that's a stretch. if the intent is to create a sarcastic nick-name that compares the ceo to a dictator, "chairman pao" is going to be a front-runner not because pao and mao are both chinese but because pao and mao are only 1 letter different from each other.

You can't really reason with people once they labeled something as "racist". Convincing them that they are wrong would imply that they can't differentiate between what's racist and what's not and that's something that would affect their core beliefs.

Regardless of the intention, they ARE both chinese. So is it really a stretch to see a racist element to this nick name? It is racist by default. I'm not saying that it is a greatly offensive nickname or even unfunny, but for someone to call it racist is not at all a stretch.

Is it racist to acknowledge that Ellen Pao is of Chinese ancestry? I don't get how but I don't get a lot of the modern sensitivities.

Certainly if you want to denigrate someone and you bring up their gender or ethnicity, it can be sexist or racist.

but they aren't denigrating her because she is Chinese. They are denigrating her because they perceive her to be a terrible CEO, and Chairman Pao is a easy way to belittle what they see as her 'authoritarian' ways

Give it a rest

how is it racist?

yes only those of Chinese decent are compared to Mao.

https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0SO8xk4b...

calling obama a monkey is different from calling george w. bush a monkey regardless of intention.

Don't know why people are downvoting this. It's racist. Period. End of discussion.

Also funny which trumps both even if true.

It's not racist, calm down Tumblr.

Calling someone you disagree with racist is itself racist. People call her Charmin Pao because she moved to limit free speech, increase dictatorial control, fire those who disagree with her and generally seems like dictator in here own special little way.