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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

I don't like this at all.

Even if she wasn't the right person (I don't know), all the worst elements of the site are going to see this as a victory for their awful behavior and it's going to get worse.

The people who attacked her with sexism and comments about her personal relationships. The people who supported FPH even though they were attacking people in real life and off Reddit, not just posting comments in their personal corner of 'discussion'.

She didn't do a good job of it, but at least she tried to stand up against some of the worst of Reddit.

I worry heavily that if the new person doesn't draw a clear line at the start things are going to get a lot worse in terms of hate/abuse/harassment.

EDIT: After posting this I saw Nilay Patel tweeted basically the same thing: https://twitter.com/reckless/status/619620964658245632

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> but at least she tried to stand up against some of the worst of Reddit.

I'm baffled at how people misunderstand Ellen's actions in shutting down a few subreddits randomly.

She did not 'clean' reddit of the worst of reddit nor 'hate' subreddits. In fact, there are still dozens and dozens of really disgusting stuff on reddit like /r/gasthekikes and /r/coontown

Let's please stop this false narrative that she was a champion of some kind who came in and tried to 'clean up' reddit.

Not only are there plenty of reprehensible stuff on reddit still, Ellen's claim that she targeted behavior and not speech rang hollow for the majority on reddit because communities like SRS were and are getting away with the same or worse behavior.

Let's make three categories of things on Reddit. One is innocuous (or relatively so) like /r/knitting or even /r/politics or /r/atheism. Perhaps there are big arguments but in the grand scheme of things it's not bad.

Type two is /r/coontown or other hate subs. They're clearly offensive. I wouldn't let them on my site if I ran it, but they exist. The key here is they stay mostly to themselves. I wasn't aware of them before all this.

Type 3 are problem subs. Things like /r/FPH. There often offensive, but on top of that they branch out to act in the real world or in other subs. They don't stay confined to their one little corner but actually make things worse for everyone. Never if your topic isn't flat out offensive doxing or causing actual harm fits here.

What they did was a small hit against some of category three. It wasn't much, but it's the most I've seen in a long time on Reddit. Given the amount of stuff I've seen in the last year against various people in the games industry in other places, some of that organized on Reddit, I'm happy to see something done.

There are still tons of subs in category three that they haven't done anything too. The vast majority of them. And I really don't care about category two things, I'd be fine if I didn't wanted to ban those too.

By no means did she clear up Reddit. But at least I saw she tried to do something, dipping her toe into the battle. And I'm worried I'll be back sliding on that.

> By no means did she clear up Reddit. But at least I saw she tried to do something, dipping her toe into the battle. And I'm worried I'll be back sliding on that.

The main problem I think most people had with it wasn't that there was action taken. It's that it was arbitrary, there were no guidelines given, and there was no consistency.

If there had been a set of community guidelines published, a week given for moderators to rein in their members, and then the ban hammer had come down, I doubt anyone would have cared.

It was probably incompetence rather than malice -- same as firing Victoria -- but the fact is that there were arbitrary actions taken with no explanation, warning, or chance for people to prepare.

> The main problem I think most people had with it wasn't that there was action taken. It's that it was arbitrary, there were no guidelines given, and there was no consistency.

There were all of these things. There just wasn't completeness - i.e. they didn't (yet?) ban every sub that was in "category 3" harassing people IRL. It was not arbitrary: those ones were actively harassing people. There were guidelines: they existed before, and she posted them in response. There was no inconsistency: subreddits failing to meet these criteria were not banned under this policy. 100% of people upset on these grounds are in the wrong.

All of the brigading stuff is so needless subjective too. If you are going to ban some communities for behavior, establish a clear definition of that behavior and track it.

Analytics showing brigading statistics would be dead simple. It would establish a clear, objective metric and back the notion of behavior, not ideas, being targeted.

I also kind of doubt objective numbers would justify the actual banned subreddits; I think it would show a lot of other ones were just as bad or worse, but weren't so unapologetically disgusting.

There were a lot more banned subreddits and users way before Pao was anywhere in the reddit picture. Its nothing new.

The reddit anger towards her was mostly accumulation of cultural change that has been going in reddit management every since Yishan left (also ~30 employees were fired/let go in a very short period) and firing of Victoria just the tipping point. It also helps that Victoria was very well liked.

I honestly dont know who is to be blamed for reddit going the shithole but at the end of the day CEO needs to take responsibility.

>I honestly dont know who is to be blamed for reddit going the shithole but at the end of the day CEO needs to take responsibility.

That's what it boils down to. The buck stops at the CEO's desk, even if the CEO wasn't directly involved with the problem. This is really not much different than the CEO of Target losing his job after someone hacked its customer data.

> Given the amount of stuff I've seen in the last year against various people in the games industry in other places, some of that organized on Reddit, I'm happy to see something done.

I'm not. I'd prefer all of the communities stay on a site like reddit, where specific users get banned for clear violations of harassment rules, rather than the entire communities getting shut down because of the actions of a few. Most communities on reddit had clear anti-harassment rules and moderators usually banned it when it was seen.

Now, instead, the communities are moving over to sites like voat.co and 8ch.net - communities that won't get policed in any way whatsoever. And in many cases, the communities encourage harassment, brigading, and general nastiness. This is going to make the Internet a worse place in general for all of us.

> This is going to make the Internet a worse place in general for all of us.

How?

Wouldn't that make it a better place, because you won't even know that they exist. Unless you looked, anyway.

They don't stay confined to their community. They use it as a communications hub to harass from.

So what if some sub is offensive? Should it be banned?

Your opinion is offensive to me, yet I don't want to silence you, because freedom of speech is more important than people getting offended.

All she managed to do was give these "Type 3" subs the benefit of the Streisand effect. It should have been obvious that the backlash to any perceived censorship would be far greater than the effect of the censorship itself.

By no means do they stay to themselves, however. Pick a news issue involving race in the vaguest sense and they're there in the comments, promoting their diversity-apocalypse conspiracy theory. If the membership numbers are to be believed, it's swindling some people(some of whom perhaps had pre-existing beliefs, sure).

Just because she didn't completely clean Reddit doesn't mean she didn't attempt to clean some of it or make the decision to do so a bad move. The existence of some bad communities also shouldn't be used as an excuse to keep other bad communities.

>comments about her personal relationships

Is it not a relevant comment on her character that she has married someone who (allegedly) defrauded over a hundred million dollars worth of pension funds? That she later sued a company she was fired from over supposed sexism for the exact amount her husband needed for his legal defense fund? That she lost the case miserably due to a complete lack of evidence? (The case against her husband, on the other hand, looks like it will be quite the open and shut case with mountains of evidence)

I don't care about reddit at all, but I don't understand how anyone can defend her and her husband after one of them (allegedly) ruined the pension funds of thousands of clients who trusted them, and the other tried to provide him with the funding to get off scot free for the actions.

Would you defend Bernie Madoff or someone who had been complicit in trying to keep him unpunished for his crimes?

> I don't understand how anyone can defend her and her husband after one of them (allegedly) ruined the pension funds of thousands of clients who trusted them

This is 2015, I really hope you don't need someone to explain to you that women don't have to share the blame for their husbands (alleged) misdeeds. Disgusting.

Based on your comment history I can't tell if you're a troll or just severely misguided. On the off chance that you do legitimately believe this, I'll go ahead and respond.

Fundamentally, you misjudge my stance: I don't care Pao's a woman. If I learned that the woman I married had done that to people, I would not stay with them, because I cannot reconcile being married to someone who can do that with my own ethos. That she has speaks volumes of her character. If Pao had committed fraud, and her husband had stayed with her, I would have the same feelings about him.

(From your comments, I suppose this is the part where you claim that Male White Nerds on the internet always say that, but never do it, etc.)

Second: It's not even just a matter of staying with him, but she has sued a company that turned out to be innocent for sexual discrimination asking for the exact amount in damages that he needs to cover his legal fees. To me, that steps beyond just having suspect character, to outright being complicit in the attempt to prevent him from paying for his crimes.

Pao is disgusting, and it has nothing to do with her gender. Only her actions.

> She didn't do a good job of it, but at least she tried to stand up against some of the worst of Reddit.

These are two separate things. The fact that she tried to stand up against some of the idiots that inhabit the site doesn't mitigate against the fact that she did not do a good job. She should have resigned or been fired for not doing a good job regardless of how well she coped with the jerks en masse.

They're not the same thing, my worry is that some Redditors (or employees) may not pay attention to the difference and avoid further cleanup.

He did call redditors out in the announcement though, maybe it'll be alright

https://reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_old_te...

" 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. "

I hadn't read his post yet, God I'm glad to see that. I hope you're right.

If Reddit can get back to focusing on positive things, like reddit gifts, admins with good community relations, and not firing people who have cancer, I think they'll be in good shape.

If Reddit continues to focus on cracking down on the negativity that exists on the site, it will give the negative voices a bigger stage.

I think they will be able to get back to doing positive, fun things, and the negativity will be drowned out.

I think it was the right move for many reasons.

Should someone hesitate from making the right move if vile people happen to support that move?

I think they should have waited for some cool off or had a 'shadow' CEO or announced this at the same time as a big cut off of some of the worst subs.

This can easily be interpreted as a repudiation of some of the things she tried to do to clean up the site, and that would be a horrible message to send.

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