Emotionally loaded language. Blatant fact framing. Suppositions. Presenting one side of a controversial issue as an opinion of absolute majority. Manufacturing "context" out of true, but mostly unrelated facts.

It's especially striking in contrast to the original, reasonably balanced, text. Sort of like "before" and "after" pictures.

https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=9870891

Here is the actual article:

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

My challenge to you:

Either (1) tell me which of those paragraph summaries is inaccurate, and how the accurate summary would reveal "suppositions" and "manufactured context", or (2) tell me which of those paragraph summaries directly implicates either of those two things.

Again, you made a list of things that bother you about news stories, but also affirmatively claimed that the article printed suppositions and manufactured context, so I'd like to see if you can back those two specific arguments up with evidence.

Thanks!

>1. Pao is a hero to many online for her gender equality fight, but was ousted by people online as well. This is mostly beyond dispute, except for the presumption that the Reddit mob actually did oust her, which all the principals in the story deny. That interpretation favors the Reddit mob.

Who is she a hero to? How many is "many"? What evidence do they have of this statement? Is she actually fighting for gender equality? You were also right to question whether the 'crowd' (the current wording) is the cause of her ouster, but it is also worth asking just who is to be included in that group, and whether they can legitimately be thought of as a single coherent entity.

That's just one sentence. Your second point:

>2. Pao's resignation was abrupt and happened amidst a torrent of misogynist drama, renewing concerns about SV sexism. It's indisputable that her resignation was abrupt. It's indisputable that the story has generated concern about online sexism. Some people may not appreciate that concern, but that doesn't make its existence not a fact.

We can split hairs about what is meant by "abrupt resignation", but the community has been unhappy for quite some time. The change.org petition has been around for about a month. "happened amidst a torrent of misogynist drama" is a phrase nearly without empirical meaning. Certainly there was "drama" involved, as with any other significant occurrence, but one must ask to what extent was "misogyny" involved, how was that relevant, and what criteria do they use to qualify that term. And of course, "renewing" what "concerns" to whom?

One can continue down your list in a similar fashion.

Furthermore, the context is certainly manufactured. Pao is famous for her lawsuit, and as a consequence gets associated with "sexism in tech". Ironically, while the outcome of the lawsuit determined that she had not suffered gender discrimination, any news about her now assumes as context a narrative that she is the victim of sexism.

The new sexism angle is a red herring, and the article is worse off for it.

Just to be clear, it was made in response to FPH being shut down.

So, your responses to my challenge. Thank you! I think the first one is valid, and that reasonable people can disagree; the second one, less so.

Who is Pao a hero to? Not so much me. I think it's fair to argue that she's less a hero than "someone with a cheering section". Is she fighting for gender equality? That depends on the semantics you adopt. Reasonable people will argue that taking a sexual harassment case to court is "fighting for gender equality". Pao's reasonable detractors will say that she's fighting for her own financial interests.

Did Pao resign abruptly? Categorically yes, so much so that I'm a little irritated at Altman and Ohanian to see how it was managed. In an orderly succession, the CEO announces that they're leaving at, say, the end of the month. That didn't happen here. Not only that, but this CEO resigned amidst loud, newsworthy clamor for her ouster. Reddit's choreography leaves open the question of whether Reddit mobs can oust people at Reddit --- certainly, the mob thinks it can! There's no practical reason Pao couldn't have been quietly replaced by Huffman, who could have joined the board, and then a few weeks from now announce her resignation at the end of, I don't know, September. Operationally, Huffman would be doing the same thing he's doing now, but the optics would be clearer.

They didn't do that because Pao resigned abruptly. Not only did she resign abruptly, but both she and the board noted in their announcement that that Reddit mob was a destructive factor in the resignation.

Pao would not have resigned had the last few months of drama --- most of which does not appear to have been her making, and before you settle on "the buck stops with the CEO" please note that in this weird company, the CEO's boss had an operational role, and was himself responsible for the most dramatic misstep the company made. She probably did leave because she genuinely didn't feel she was the right person at this point to grow Reddit's userbase. But that judgement was almost certainly based in part on the fact that anything Reddit did with her name attached would be trolled and harassed by the redpill "chairmin pow" mob.

Supposition:

"If she eventually succeeds in convincing a three-judge panel that the trial was unfair"

Aren't news supposed to be about what happened, not about what might happen if something else happens? I could understand if the story was about the trial, but it isn't.

Which brings me to the manufactured context part. The story is about resignation from Reddit. I understand that sometimes you need to provide more information about the subject so your reader fully understands what's going on. However, information about the lawsuit against an entirely different company under different circumstances does nothing of this sort. The only seeming reason it's included (and takes almost half the space) is because it supports meta-narrative NYT chose to pursue.

If she eventually succeeds in convincing a three-judge panel that the trial was unfair, Kleiner (and Silicon Valley, symbolically) would be on trial again.

This is self-evidently true.

You might not like that Pao's trial keeps appearing in the Times story about Pao's resignation, but the giant petition for her ouster chose to lead itself off with it. It's materially part of the real context of the story.

The statement is true, but what it speaks about is a what-if scenario.

You might not like that Pao's trial keeps appearing in the Times story about Pao's resignation, but the giant petition for her ouster chose to lead itself off with it. It's materially part of the real context of the story.

I'm not saying that NYT should be prohibited from mentioning the lawsuit. I'm saying that it's not directly related, and definitely not related enough to take up half the article.

My issue isn't with what he said in his quote. It's that the Times changed their well-balanced piece into one that implies the crappy parts of reddit need to be brought under 'control' and quoted a sentence from Kapor that lends support. I may be wrong (and to be honest I don't personally know much about Mitch), but I'd be surprised if a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation feels that reddit should be more restrictive on speech it hasn't moderated to this point. While his quote doesn't directly say he supports more censorship by any means, including it in the context of that article misconstrues his (probable) beliefs.

Or at least some people are saying so.

If they expressed any opposing view, that might be valid. But they may as well have stated it as fact.

(aside: that's not a WP: page anymore? lame)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word...

And the problem Wikipedia has with them is that they can disguise special pleading. But that's clearly not what's happening here: there very obviously is a renewed concern over bullying in the wake of the Pao fiasco.

The weaseling is in the reverse – by saying their article is only about 'some people' they imply that other people exist, but never give them any ink. Hence I say the sentence is equivalent to stating objectively that cyberbullying is a problem that must be stopped and this incident is proof.

It solely tries make Ellen Pao into a martyr for anti-sexism in SV.

And don't get me wrong, the nasty behavior on reddit probably warrants an article. I'd argue that the prescription shouldn't be to hide people's behavior through censorship but to change it, whether by convincing them to self-censor or better changing people's minds, which I think sama did well in his announcement. But as a summary overview of why Reddit has a new CEO, this article failed miserably.

1) victoria (and reddit management) shuts down 5 subreddits. 2) victoria is fired (maybe because she refused to move to sf and was otherwise insubordinate). 3) reddit erupts with support for victoria and hate for ellen. 4) ellen resigns.

what's the connection of 1 to 2-4? what else is missing?

1) Victoria, the admin who interfaces celebrities and /r/IAmA, was abruptly dismissed. No cause given, which grew a lot of conspiracy theories, but that's obviously standard practice when you fire an employee.

2) /r/IAmA mods find out when a PR rep reaches out to them after showing up at reddit offices and finding out their appointment with Victoria was canceled. Mods don't know how to get in contact with other people who are supposed to appear that day. They take the subreddit private, with a short message about having to figure the situation out.

3) Reddit uproar starts. /r/OutOfTheLoop post asks why /r/IAmA is closed, an /r/IAmA mod explains, people get upset about Victoria leaving. Separately (in my opinion) — or centrally (in tptacek's)— the hate subreddits from prior incidents like /r/FatPeopleHate deletion and GamerGate kick into high gear.

4) Other subreddits start going private in solidarity. This spreads until over 100 have shut down, pledging a 24 hour blackout. I think the petition starts around this time. /r/all is basically just this drama.

5) General shenanigans. Flaming, offensive content, etc. /u/kn0thing (Alexis Ohanian) posts a flippant comment in the heat of the moment, starts getting flamed too. Mostly though, he says "Not going to talk about Victoria. Chill, we're gonna get this /r/IAmA stuff figured out," on behalf of the admins (reddit staff).

6) /r/IAmA comes back up, says they're independent from the admins and are going to run things themselves. Ellen Pao talks to news media, posts eventually but gets downvoted to 0 - all her comments were thousands negative and had lots of angry/offensive replies. (Later we learn many positive things were said to her too.)

7) A week passes, mostly dying down. Petition gets more signatures, ultimately reaching >100k I think. Eventually they post an apology, to mixed reactions.

8) Sam Altman posts that Pao resigned, but includes a reproach of the behavior exhibited in the prior week. Seems to get positive reactions from both sides – people welcomed a return to civility and also Ellen's departure. People suddenly start realizing that the horrible things she's been doing to reddit might be because of reason and/or outside pressure, not because she hates freedom and happiness.

9) People start using this incident to complain about internet behavior more generally.

Just a small correction. The petition was made in response to the shut down of fatpeoplehate and others.

Lots of pure speculation that Victoria was fired because Jesse Jackson's AMA the previous day went poorly, or maybe because the reddit administration wanted to ruin IAmA somehow. No hard facts.

It is merely still going on and might receive slightly more attention now that the shit show is winding down.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...

I keep hoping that somebody will write about the difference between censorship and private parties choosing not to support and/or tolerate certain behaviors. It shouldn't be necessary, but there's a generation of people so incredibly entitled and so incredibly insane that they actually need a primer on reality.

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

> Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is called self-censorship. Censorship may be direct or it may be indirect, in which case it is called soft censorship. It occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.

> Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on the type, place, and content. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and frequently a claim of necessity to balance conflicting rights is made, in order to determine what can and cannot be censored. There are no laws against self-censorship.

EDIT: also, parent comment being downvoted and flagged is ironic.

(grandparent was edited after flag, even more ironically by a mod I think)

EDIT: In fact, let's all just take a second to appreciate the irony here. A guy made a throwaway account, called me an idiot, and (lamely) doxxed me – all in order to argue for restricting lowbrow content on internet forums. Love it.

(I'd argue that your post just underwent self- or moderator censorship, of the justified sort.)

> It's incredibly disingenuous to claim that having some guidelines on a private forum (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) counts as "Internet Censorship".

> You are actively supporting hatred by making that argument.

> It is not censorship or suppression of speech to tell a bigot that they can no longer borrow your megaphone. The bigot remains free to buy, build, or borrow another megaphone, a fact demonstrated clearly by the rise of voat.

> It is morally reprehensible to argue that taking away a privately owned megaphone is equivalent to censorship. It diminishes the meaning of the word, and boils it down to nothing. You should be ashamed of yourself for making such a truly insane and asinine argument.

Let's call a spade a spade. It's absolutely censorship by the definition of the word. You believe it's justified censorship.

"It" is somewhat unclear - but let's call it moderation beyond what is currently exercised by reddit, in order to remove the unpleasant content we saw in the wake of the FPH and Victoria incidents and is excoriated by this article.

I argue against it for precisely the same reason you think it's justified. The range of human opinion on every topic is incredibly broad. That means that there's a tiny minority of people who hold truly outrageous and objectionable views. If you simply hide those people with deletions and shadowbans, you relegate them to their tiny corner of the internet where they're free to reinforce each other's insane ideals. One of the greatest things about reddit is that though it's divided into subreddits, it's one big place - and any given user's reddit lineup will have slightly different posts than another's, whether cat photos or racism. That means you get cross-pollination (or -contamination), which offers a chance to change those people's minds. Yes, the crazies will show up in big community threads. But that means the sanes get a chance to teach them why they're wrong, whether by shaming them like sama, convincing them with reasoned argument (lol), or just downvoting them into oblivion and sending some irrational flames back (your choice!).

When you destroy the centrality of reddit, even if by cutting out really bad stuff, you encourage the sharding of the web into isolated echo chambers.

EDIT: No, I think you're absolutely right that reddit has zero obligation to allow any content. I'm merely arguing that though the content may be reprehensible and censorship is legal and even justifiable, it would not improve reddit to remove it.

Let's take antisemitism as the truly outrageous & objectional view. Say that a tiny minority of users of reddit are vehemently antisemitic. Sure, they can hang out on their own subreddits and talk about how great antisemitism is, and they do. But they also post in popular subs, bringing their vitriol along with them. The community doesn't care, because censorship is bad. Sound about right so far?

Say you're Jewish. You wander in to a thread on some popular sub and you find a bunch of antisemitic comments. What is your reaction? Do you dig in and try to convince the antisemites that they're wrong? Or do you say fuck it and leave? How many times does this have to happen before you write off reddit all together?

Now let's say reddit is full of antisemites, homophobes, xenophobes, racists, fascists, and sexists. If you're jewish, gay, from another country, black, aren't a fascist, or a woman, why would you want to keep visiting the site?

Let's say you're none of those things, but you think that antisemites et al. are terrible people. Why would you want to spend time on a site that is full of those kinds of people?

Why would you want to visit a site where terrible people aren't told to get the fuck out but rather defended because telling them that they are not welcome in a community is censorship?

>Now let's say reddit is full of antisemites, homophobes, xenophobes, racists, fascists, and sexists. Do you say fuck it and leave?

Absolutely I'd leave a place like that. See, that's the great thing about reddit. It's not full of those people. 95% of people are not in the category of the "racist sexist 5%." So those people get drowned out, or downvoted to oblivion, or very occasionally rebuked by an authority figure to positive response. And yeah, those assholes who write the worst shit probably aren't going to change their mind. But maybe we can reach the guy who just browses, and make him think twice before hitting the upvote button.

> Why would you want to visit a site where terrible people aren't told to get the fuck out

I just want them to be told to shut the fuck up, not get the fuck out. And I limit this opinion to reddit generally, since I see it as the central place for internet discourse. Subreddits and non-reddit fora should absolutely censor content to create the desired community attitude.

It would seem to be the very definition of censorship.

It might be technically correct to call water a 'clear liquid', but isn't there a better term or name to use, a more accurate and descriptive term to use? A clear liquid can also refer to vodka or rubbing alcohol or even many types of acids. Being clear and using the correct terms are important to the discussion. Overusing the word "Censorship" just because it might be technically correct dilutes the word's meaning. Especially since what's happening most of the time is content curation.

(I'll add that when it ventures into the realm of truly offensive behavior that can hardly be classified as content, the pro-restrictions term might start to become "justified censorship")

If you remove speech you don't like, it is censorship.

Curation would be tagging content for a front-end filter that excludes content based on its configuration.

Because according to this definition what an editor at a newspaper engages in is censorship - and no one takes issue with that. It is an self evidently reasonable position to like or even love that kind of censorship – but the comment writes about it as though any endorsement of this kind of censorship were self-evidently evil, something not many people will agree with.

You can use this definition of censorship – but then also know that liking or loving censorship in certain situation is also quite reasonable. I want my censors to be fierce and awesome! I want to, after all, read a newspaper worth reading. And why not also moderate much more heavily at Reddit? Is that somehow evil? I think it would be awesome.

We best get used to it, the baby boomers will be with us for a while.

Are you calling them juvenile and misogynist too?

I won't disagree that race and gender were used as part of that hatred, that's obviously the case. I think, though, that it's easy to mix up whether things are tools that people use to attack someone they already hate vs. reasons for hating them in the first place. I don't honestly know which it was in this case, but it's not hard for me to imagine that it was the former.

To take a hypotetical, let's say Reddit's CEO was a gay man who had sued a previous employer for something related to discrimination based on sexual orientation. I think Redditors would have been less negative about that, as Reddit is very pro gay rights. Then, when Victoria was fired I think the anger would have been less directed at the CEO personally and more towards the admin team as a whole, or at Reddit's owners.

We could also compare the recent banning of /r/fatpeoplehate with /r/jailbait earlier. People were upset about that too, but I cannot remember outright hate directed at the CEO personally.

I do agree with you about the racist posts. That seems like it's just a tool used to attack her.

My understanding is that her lawsuit was more related to her ethics, or lack thereof, than to her gender. Is that an unreasonable way to put it?

After reading up on the trial to me it seemed rather obvious that the suit was fraudulent and had no basis in reality. The jury quickly reached a unanimous agreement on almost all of the counts as well with little room for debate on most of the issues at hand. As far as I recall they just spent a bit of time on the details regarding one specific thingamabob.

FPH ban had some hate against pao but not on this level as far as I recall (wasn't really in the drama then). The jailbait shebangle is before my time so dunno there.

This combined with the various ethical misadventures of her and her homosexual husband (which would actually help them considerably from an ethical viewpoint considerably if the CEO was actually a gay male as then it wouldn't be an obvious sham marriage).

Well sure. If 3% of people are virulently sexist (against women) and none or fewer are sexist against men, the overall sentiment leans towards sexism – especially when they're loud about it. But the opinions of the fringe should not indict the actions of the rest of the people on their side. I do not believe that most or even a substantial portion of the 200,000 people who signed the petition to remove Pao were motivated primarily by misogyny or racism.