Besides, these people have always been there and haven't caused any large scale problems, and they didn't when Ellen was appointed (which is when they should have started protesting, assuming you buy the misogyny charge). It was when some quite heavy handed restrictions started to be laid down with regards to freedom of speech that the uprising began to grow.
Personally, I'm glad she's gone, I much prefer reddit to be an extremely politically incorrect place. Take fatpeoplehate for instance - is it hurtful to fat people? Sure. But that subreddit can be easily blocked from your feed. Should someone have to do that? I think yes, they should, because if the new policy is to not hurt anyone's feelings, a whole bunch of content has to disappear.
Now that's just my opinion of how I want reddit to be - it is up to the owners of reddit to decide how they want it to be.
Was turning the front page of /r/all into a cesspool of hate the right way to protest her decisions? Maybe not, but honestly, what alternative is there that would have actually had any effect?
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of why FPH was banned - it wasn't because of offensive/hateful content like /r/coontown; it was because of active off-site harassment & brigading that the mods couldn't control.
One of us has a misunderstanding on that and I'm not so sure it's me. I'm aware of the brigading claim, but not of any widespread evidence. And even if so, then how do you defend the inconsistent enforcement of that rule amongst other subreddits like /r/srs? If you're going to use a rule to close a sub, then by god enforce that rule consistently if you want people to take you seriously.
If you were aware of the reasoning behind the ban - that it was because of alleged brigading, and not because of just hateful content, then that makes your post above (trying to make readers of your comment believe that it was arbitrary due to an offensive sub) quite deceptive.
As it happens they many times explicitly explained why SRS no longer meets the bar for banning under their current policy. Not that I need to defend reddit's decisions, nor automatically become on their side. Further, even without them explicitly saying why they did not ban SRS, it is not inconsistent - it is merely incomplete.
No evidence was given, so you don't know either.
You are correct in that they are free to do as they choose with the website they own, but not taking into consideration your userbase's opinion of your actions seems like not an optimal recipe for success. Treat your users, who produce all your content and manage the majority of your business through voluntary moderation with zero respect, authoritatively decide what is "on or off topic for discussion", and see what happens.
> If you were aware of the reasoning behind the ban - that it was because of alleged brigading, and not because of just hateful content, then that makes your post above (trying to make readers of your comment believe that it was arbitrary due to an offensive sub) quite deceptive.
Oh I'm aware of the stated reasoning, and I:
a) reject it on the grounds that it is not consistently applied. If <subreddit x> is banned because of <rule y>, but that rule doesn't apply everywhere, then it wasn't actually banned because of <rule y>, because a "selectively enforced" rule is not really a rule. They're trying to use unemotional logical reason to explain their actions, but they are not acting logically.
b) don't believe them, in part because the statement that reddit is not intended to be a place for free speech, which is most definitely a change from the original culture and spirit.
> As it happens they many times explicitly explained why SRS no longer meets the bar for banning under their current policy.
I'm not at all aware of the details of this but I would like to learn - is this common knowledge?
> Further, even without them explicitly saying why they did not ban SRS, it is not inconsistent - it is merely incomplete.
I disagree. srs is infamous for brigading, and this behavior can be easily observed. So, if brigading is grounds for banning, then srs should be banned. If brigading is just one aspect of a complicated formula, then provide some background. Or, if you want to exercise your right (as the platform owner) to completely control all content, then simply state that outright. Or don't, and just continue to subtly move in that direction without discussing it, and see what happens, which I'd argue is exactly what has happened here. What happens is, your users (a significant portion at least) revolt, the story ends up being splashed through mainstream media including financial news, and before too long someone "resigns", "because their growth targets were inconsistent with management". (Do you believe that one also?)
Yes, see the 3rd FAQ of the announcement post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...
> I disagree. srs is infamous for brigading, and this behavior can be easily observed. So, if brigading is grounds for banning, then srs should be banned. If brigading is just one aspect of a complicated formula, then provide some background.
See the 2nd FAQ
> the statement that reddit is not intended to be a place for free speech,
Where did you read that? From the post above, they're trying to carefully balance offsite harassment & free speech and acknowledge that this is hard. Incidentally note that they said it's a change to their management policy, not "haha gotcha we were never free speech". Not that you have or should expect free speech on reddit anyway etc.
Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals. If a subreddit has been banned for harassment, you will see that in the ban notice. The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate[2].
Harassment vs Brigading: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...
"When we are using the word "harass", we're not talking about "being annoying" or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day. When you've had to talk to as many victims of it as we have, you'd understand that a brigade from one subreddit to another is miles away from the harassment we don't want being generated on our site."
"We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected" Agreed.
"worry for their safety every day" Oh please.
"because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day." Laughably, transparently false. This sounds like the thruthiness that comes from the minds of MBA's and is accepted (in public discourse) on wall street, but it does go over so well on reddit.
Look, if they want to ban "harassment", which I don't argue that fph was at least in some way, then just state the facts and ban it, it's not so hard. It is the completely unnecessary lying that fired up the outrage, imho. Just say "poking fun at fat people is malicious and we're no longer allowing it. Sorry.", and I don't think there would have been a shitstorm.
>> I disagree. srs is infamous for brigading, and this behavior can be easily observed. So, if brigading is grounds for banning, then srs should be banned. If brigading is just one aspect of a complicated formula, then provide some background.
> See the 2nd FAQ
It is not easy to balance these values, especially as the Internet evolves. We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward. We want to be open about our involvement: We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass[1] individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior, not ideas.
That in no way excuses srs. As far as I understand, brigading is explicitly a bannable offense. srs brigades. srs has not been banned. Once again, inconsistentcy & dishonesty leads to mistrust and anger.
>> the statement that reddit is not intended to be a place for free speech,
> Where did you read that? From the post above, they're trying to carefully balance offsite harassment & free speech and acknowledge that this is hard. Incidentally note that they said it's a change to their management policy, not "haha gotcha we were never free speech".
http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-its-not-...
"It's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time."
Now, combine that with some of the interesting commentary on "safe spaces" that we see coming out of our institutions of higher learning on a regular basis, and draw your own conclusions as to whether the uprising was based on pure unsubstantiated paranoia or not.
> Not that you have or should expect free speech on reddit anyway etc.
As I said before: force a culture on your users and observe the result. It's certainly the right of reddit's owners, but I don't think they'll like the result. My opinion seems to be fairly consistent with the actions and words of the new (old) management, at least so far.
EDIT: on SRS specifically:
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...
"May I ask why /r/shitredditsays[1] has not been banned despite being caught multiple times sending death threats and doxing, and even admitting to doing these things? I think most people would be placated if there were just some consistency in how the rules are applied."
"Sure. We did not ban SRS because the behavior you're referring to, while definitely falling into our current definition of "harassment," happened long ago. We don't put policy into place in order to retroactively ban backlogged behavior. If their harassment becomes a problem again, we will revisit that decision, but until that happens this is where we're at."
Which is a blatant lie, as everyone knows. Again, if you want to selectively ban subreddits, just do it and say why you are doing it, I really think the backlash would be relatively minor, why the compulsive lying?
> Which is a blatant lie, as everyone knows.
I don't know that, and upon further inspection it is not obviously a lie, and is actually pretty reasonable. How did you determine that everyone knows this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoParticipation/wiki/intro
Then go here and click some links - notice anything?
I believe that tends to violate site rules.
Ah, here's where the change was proposed: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/p0yaf/meta_...
Seems like this is vote manipulation
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_constitutes_vote_c...
"Don't edit the CSS of your subreddit to willfully mislead users."
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_constitutes_vote_c...
> I don't know that, and upon further inspection it is not obviously a lie, so there must be something wrong with your ability to deduce things if you feel that everyone knows that.
Once a conversation reaches the point of pedantry it's generally a good idea to just stop.
Some hires and the chilling effects thing are maybe the biggest unambiguous positive developments. The subreddit banning and the salary negotiations thing were received with mixed opinion, but even if you agree with what was banned, the handling of it was questionable and seemed very rushed.
And then there was last week, which derailed the site over a weekend and made national news outlets for the whole week. A lot of details about internal dealings came to light, and none of them particularly painted reddit in a good light. There is no plausible way the amount of good shes done in the last 10-12 months outweighed the massive damage that was inflicted.
It is also worth noting that the people who do have access to a lot of internal information about the inner workings of reddit 'mutually' agreed that she shouldn't be the CEO. Undoubtedly the backlash -- some of it misguided -- played into this, but frankly a large part of being the CEO of a community-based site is PR.
No plausible way the day to day internal changes / hirings / firings that you are not privy to have had a balancing effect on this? What was your methodology in assessing the damage that the blackout caused to reddit that you used to measure against the good she could have plausibly caused in order to form your rational opinion? A cursory look at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/about/traffic does not seem to indicate any lasting impact.
It is not worth noting that random employees (actually, not random: ones who' have enough of an axe to grind that they'll risk their job to break NDA) think a CEO is bad. That is the case at almost every company, small and large. Find me one where you can't find 2 employees that agree there should be a different CEO etc.
Sorry but we are looking at it from a necessarily uninformed outsider's perspective so we can't possibly have a meaningful opinion on whether she was an effective CEO.
And even if I was an employee; well there are always disgruntled employees, their opinion isn't reasonable either.
These are absurd arguments. By the same logic, the CEO of whole foods could hold a press conference and just go on a racist, hateful rant, and I couldn't possibly have a meaningful opinion on their effectiveness as a CEO.
In any event, the people I meant who did have the internal data weren't employees, I meant their board of directors.
And is it possible that a CEO is really awesome, but really really unlucky, and it just _looks_ like they are bad at their job outwardly? Sure, there is some non-zero chance of this; much like there is some non-zero chance of damn near anything.
Perfect information is an impossible ideal; arguing that a rational opinion is impossible regardless of any circumstance since we don't have access to all the information which exists would imply that no person can have a rational opinion about anything, ever.
And yes, literally it is true that the CEO of whole foods could go on a huge racist rant and you could not have a meaningful opinion on their effectiveness as CEO. Or rather, what you want to say is "in this extreme example, this CEO is clearly ineffective", but we know of morally shitty CEOs who drive huge company growth & profits and are therefore effective CEOs.
Anyway, can you show your work that you were referring to behind your analysis of the magnitude of the damage that the recent reddit blackout did?
More substantially, if all AMA teams really are going to be running the show without official reddit support, this cuts in a couple of ways. It shows a maintained lack of faith in reddit from the moderators, and it also is going to make the logistics of AMAs more difficult. The AMAs are unique content which is a substantial draw of new users, where a ton of the work was already done by volunteers. The logistical strain is going to make for less or worse content, pick your poison. High profile guests, especially those not technically savvy, are less likely to participate without admin support being available.
Strategically, reddit almost certainly wants to be involved in this -- they want to be tightly coupled, enough that the group can't spin off their own version.
I don't think this damage is irreparable, but I do think it's going to take substantial work to fix. And I mean, don't take that from me, take it from them -- https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap....
The main issue (no one to coordinate AMAs) was dealt with in a matter of hours without serious consequences. The "monumental cluster fuck" image is due to hundreds of people with an axe to grind who piled up on top it, mostly with unrelated "anti-SJW" complaints.