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Comment by sudioStudio64 | Hacker News Reader

The intense vitriol about Ellen Pao makes me very suspicious of most complaints from vocal redditors.

I'm not even really sure why the anti-fem crowd hates her so much. But man...wow.

If some of the things that I've read today are to be believed, the firing of this admin was a stupid act. Reddit and several other "web 2.0" companies made it big on "user generated content" which always seemed like it had the potential to turn into a gross corporate overlord milking their user-cow for all it's worth.

It seems like there are a lot of valley companies that just want to slap a sticker on your culture and hand it back to you. Or they want to say that the rules don't apply to them because they are so new and communicate with their employees through an app or some other horse shit.

In the end, it sounds like this young woman (the admin they fired) did her job well and it sucks when people aren't rewarded for that.

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As a long time redditor I think I can help shine some light here. When Yishong Wang left abruptly there was a real pull from the community to bring Alexis back - or if not him then someone who was "from reddit." When Pao was announced the thought was "why is a lawyer taking over?" She reeks of 1%ers which redditors love to bash on when they see one bleeding (not Elon Musk of course).

Within just a few months Pao made some major moves that directly impacted reddit staff and could be attributed to her presence - namely eliminating salary negotiations, which caused a big stir. The banning of specific hate-speech subreddits at her direction pushed large segments of the community against her for a variety of reasons - some cause they were just mad they lost a platform and other stating that it was anti-democratic censorship.

Her massive public lawsuit, which was panned as frivolous across the web, basically killed any remaining credibility she did have with the community. When she lost the suit it was like fuel to the fire.

Now pretty much anything she does is toxic.

A large subset of vocal redditors hated Pao the moment she walked through the door. Now everything that happens on her watch is considered evidence of her awfulness.

Goes to show you just how powerful the MRA subreddits are. I used to be staunchly "free speech above all", but seeing how blind hatred can fester and spread has filled me with a lot of doubts about us, as a group of humans.

I'm with you there.

A couple of years ago a group of people that I was attracted to due to their professed reliance on reason and scientific method turned out to be virulently anti-female.

And then this fringe hatefulness just seems to have pervaded everything...even computing forums that are dedicated to what I thought were relatively dispassionate topics that are quite arcane have had death threats lobbed at people who just have a different opinion. It's fucking weird.

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