***Update 4 – 2015-07-06 – 23:42 CEST***
It feels kind of funny that Ellen Pao decided to step down as the CEO on the very same day that I uploaded our “Reddit is falling apart – The Reddit Revolt” video. However, it´s true. Ellen Pao is no longer the CEO of Reddit, as Reddit´s co-founder and original CEO Steve Huffman, takes over as the new CEO of Reddit. I´m just surprised that all of this happeneds fast, then again, there was talks about making Reddit all dark tomorrow (a open protest against Ellen Pao). So that might have been the final straw for the high ranked officers (and the board) at Reddit.
However, even though Ellen Pao is no longer in command at Reddit anymore, the damage has still been done. In fact, Pao has damaged Reddit so much that I´m somewhat afraid that Reddit is beyond redemption (voat.co has gained a lot of ex-Reddit users, for example). I´m going to give Steve Huffman a fair chance though, because his the original CEO of Reddit after all. So i wish mr Huffman the best of luck and fortune as the new CEO of Reddit (trust me, his going to need it). Oh! One more thing, I sure hope that Steve Huffman will rehire Victoria Taylor and David Croach, since both of them has done a lot of good stuff for Reddit over the years.
“Ellen Pao resigned from reddit today by mutual agreement. I’m delighted to announce that Steve Huffman, founder and the original reddit CEO, is returning as CEO.
We are thankful for Ellen’s many contributions to reddit and the technology industry generally. She brought focus to chaos, recruited a world-class team of executives, and drove growth. She brought a face to reddit that changed perceptions, and is a pioneer for women in the tech industry. She will remain as an advisor to the board through the end of 2015. I look forward to seeing the great things she does beyond that.
We’re very happy to have Steve back. Product and community are the two legs of reddit, and the board was very focused on finding a candidate who excels at both (truthfully, community is harder), which Steve does. He has the added bonus of being a founder with ten years of reddit history in his head. Steve is rejoining Alexis, who will work alongside Steve with the new title of “cofounder”.
A few other points. Mods, you are what makes reddit great. The reddit team, now with Steve, wants to do more for you. You deserve better moderation tools and better communication from the admins.
Second, redditors, you deserve clarity about what the content policy of reddit is going to be. The team will create guidelines to both preserve the integrity of reddit and to maintain reddit as the place where the most open and honest conversations with the entire world can happen.
Third, as a redditor, I’m particularly happy that Steve is so passionate about mobile. I’m very excited to use reddit more on my phone.
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.
If the reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website but it will never be a truly great community. Steve’s great challenge as CEO [2] will be continuing the work Ellen started to drive this forward.
[1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.
Ellen asked me to point out that the sweeping majority of redditors didn’t do this, and many were incredibly supportive. Although the incredible power of the Internet is the amplification of voices, unfortunately sometimes those voices are hateful.
[2] We were planning to run a CEO search here and talked about how Steve (who we assumed was unavailable) was the benchmark candidate—he has exactly the combination of talent and vision we were looking for. To our delight, it turned out our hypothetical benchmark candidate is the one actually taking the job.
NOTE: I am going to let the reddit team answer questions here, and go do an AMA myself now.” – Reddit
Credit:
P.Reaper
Source:
recode
Reddit 2005 interview
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***Update 3 – 2015-07-06 – 20:51 CEST***
Full damage control activated
I know that there´s an old saying that goes something like this “better late than never”, but in this case, it´s Ellen Pao that we´re talking about, and a community of millions of users (Reddit has +36 million users to be exact). So it´s kind of hard to accept an apology from a person that has treated both the Reddit community and its staff rather badly (mildly said). That´s also why I (and others) find it to be somewhat difficult to believe a single word of which have been written in the official modnews “We apologize” statement (as seen in the picture below). As the whole thing just screams out “Damage control!”.
Let´s just say that I don´t think that the vast majority of the Reddit community will accept Ellen Pao´s apology, nor believe anything of that´s been said or promised.
Credit:
John Galt
Source:
Reddit
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***Update 2 – 2015-07-06 – 17:20 CEST***
So, we meet a again good old “Gender Bias” card
If you´re a Reddit user, or if know someone who uses Reddit. Then you probably more than well aware of the fact that Reddit is in full revolt mode at the moment. In fact, Billy Johnson´s petition for Ellen Pao´s resignation have now reached over 160K petitions as we speak (which of course is the result of a very unhappy and angry Reddit community). So I wouldn´t be all that surprised to hear that the petition might reach 1 million petitions before the end of this week. However I highly doubt that it will force Elle Pao to resign as the CEO of Reddit, and it seems like the “Gender Bias” is being played again as well.
Gender Bias – “unequal treatment in employment opportunity (such as promotion, pay, benefits and privileges), and expectations due to attitudes based on the sex of an employee or group of employees. Gender bias can be a legitimate basis for a lawsuit under anti-discrimination statutes.” – Via legal-dictionary
However, this is nothing new in the case with Ellen Pao, since she played that card against Kleiner Perkins in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins (which Pao did back in May 2012, she lost that lawsuit in June this year). So now it´s yet again time for the gender bias card to play it´s role, but this time it´s about Pao´s ability to lead, shape and control Reddit as it´s CEO, as the community itself is really unhappy with how Pao has handled things so far (thus the demand of her resignation).
Here´s the thing, this has nothing to do with gender bias. Because the Reddit community are not unhappy with Ellen Pao because she´s a woman, or an Asian person. The truth would be this, if Ellen Pao would have done a good job as Reddit´s CEO (no matter gender or race), then there would be no Reddit revolt, nor any demand for her to step down as the CEO of Reddit. This has absolutely nothing to do with race or gender, but everything to do with the ability to operate as a skillful CEO (make the right decisions, make “good” changes, etc.).
So I got quite upset when I heard that Vox´s content director Max Fisher stated that the Reddit revolt only exists simply because Ellen Pao is a woman and none-white. As it´s nothing but pure nonsense talk, me, I couldn´t care less about Ellen Pao´s gender or race. She could have been a spineless jellyfish for all I care, as long as she does a good job as Reddit´s CEO, and I’m quite sure that the vast majority of the Reddit community share the same opinion as me on that. That´s also why I thought that it was really bad idea that Max Fisher brought in gender bias statements into the Reddit revolt conflict, as it has nothing to do with the past or current events of Reddit, the Reddit revolt happened because the community are fed up with Ellen Pao (the person, not the person’s gender or race) her new rules and changes of Reddit.
So what are your thoughts and opinions on this subject?
Source:
http://thegg.net/general-news/ellen-pao-the-mao-zedong-of-reddit/
”Ellen Pao Talks About Gender Bias in Silicon Valley” She sued the company she worked for because she didn’t get a promotion, claims it was because she was female. Company says she just didn’t deserve it. from videos
http://www.vox.com/2015/4/1/8326221/pao-sexism-data-silicon-valley
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***Update 1 – 2015-07-04 – 09:55 CEST***
Less than seven hours ago Billy Johnson Ellen Pao petition reached it´s 50,000 petitions goal (I signed up weeks ago), and now there´s less than 1,700 petitions needed to reach the 75K goal line (a goal which would be reached in the next few hours). This is of course great news for all of those who wants Ellen Pao to resign from her CEO post at Reddit, fair enough, but I highly doubt that she will give up her CEO title any time soon. As Pao is notorious for being stubborn until the very end, just take her sexual lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, it´s still an ongoing thing even though Pao lost the case in court back in June (Pao just won´t let it go).
So here´s what I’m trying to say, there´s going to take a whole lot to make Ellen Pao resign from her CEO role at Reddit, and honestly I don´t think that she cares all that much about the petition against her, nor the fact that Reddit is falling apart as we speak. However, I do wonder when Pao will realize that it´s time for her to resign as Reddit´s CEO? Maybe when Reddit is beyond saving?
Credit:
whenindoubtdo
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Reddit = Great fire of Rome 2.0?
I just woke up to the sound of the Reddit coming crashing down, or should I say that I felt the burning smoke from Reddit? Either way, I had a feeling that Reddit would end up like this, since things have gone from bad to worse over time, and some of you might remember my “Ellen Pao – The Mao Zedong of Reddit?” article? Well, I was right, because Ellen Pao really is the Mao Zedong of Reddit. In fact, she´s tearing Reddit apart,piece by piece. So what has happened for the last couple of hours that has been so chaotic? Please allow my college mr Chen to summarize the current events at Reddit for you:
“3 hours ago, Reddit talent associate Victoria Taylor was fired from her position. Her role in the company was to ensure that celebrity AMAs were really carried out by the celebrity, as well as acting as the go-between for the subreddit and its moderators (who are volunteers and not paid employees).
She was dismissed without warning. Now, we can see this as Ellen Pao screwin up again, but regardless Reddit is just imploding right now. Other subs have gone private (unreadable) in protest. The list is insanely long, r/gaming, r/todayilearned r/science. These subreddits are down because they are owned and operated by users, so they have the power over them.
Victoria’s firing might be linked to offensive and racist remarks said in a recent AMA, and it was carried out recklessly with no warning, in fact, the owner of r/iAMA was the one who started the protest by closing his own subreddit down.” – Chen “freakofnatur” Yiji
So right at this very moment, Reddit is in uproar, and many subreddits are on strike to show their dissatisfaction with Reddit´s recent crackdown on people such as Victoria Taylor (She´s a Reddit talent associate). As for me, I have never EVER seen or experience anything like this before, and I have been a Internet user since the early 90s. To be honest, this really feels like watching Rome burn down to the ground for the second time. I don´t even understand what Reddit and Ellen Pao hope to achieve with this? As they now have a whole site (and user base) that´s on full revolt mode at the moment.
Our Open letter to Ellen Pao
That´s also why I’m going to ask you (Ellen Pao) the following questions. Do you want to destroy Reddit? What are your plans for Reddit? And do you like the fact that more and more people are leaving Reddit for voat.co? And you know why? It´s because people are fed up with your censorship and nonsense behavior. So for the good of all, and for the best interest of all, please Ellen Pao, please step down as the CEO of Reddit, because you’re destroying the user experience for everyone.
Can´t you see that your burning Reddit down to the ground? And if you´re willing to sacrifice just about everything to create some “safe places” on Reddit, then you might as well pull the plug on Reddit altogether, because there won´t be any Reddit users left if you keep this up. So what do you want to do Ellen Pao? Do you want to go down with the Reddit ship? Or will you swallow your pride and leave the ship while there still is time left to clean up the mess that you have created? Be reasonable Pao, and do yourself a big favour. Take your time to think through all of this very carefully, and don´t make any more backslashes against the Reddit community, as people are already angry enough as it already is.
Nevertheless, you should resign from your post as the CEO of Reddit. As the damage has already been done and made, and it can´t be reversed In short, it´s the only right thing to do in a situation like this.
Credit:
Chen “freakofnatur” Yiji
Source:
businessinsider
Ellen Pao – The Moa Zedong of Reddit
Robin “V-Act” Ek
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround
More by Robin Ek:
Tags: Censorship, Ellen Pao, Reddit, The Mao Zedong of Reddit, Victoria Taylor