Congratulations, assholes of Reddit! You’ve driven another woman away from your internet clubhouse.
This time the woman in question was the site’s now ex-CEO Ellen Pao, who resigned today after a week of “Reddit Revolt” that included racist and misogynistic abuse aimed at “Chairman Pao” as well as the occasional death threat.
Indeed, the abuse was so bad that Pao felt the need to address it in her resignation note:
I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me. When people make something up to attack me or someone else, it spreads, and we eventually will see it. And we will feel bad, not just about what was said. Also because it undercuts the authenticity of reddit and shakes our faith in humanity.
Reddit board member Sam Altman, in his announcement of Pao’s replacement, described the attacks on Pao as “sickening,” and declared that “[i]f 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.”
This latest “Reddit Revolt” was triggered by the firing of a popular admin who worked with the site’s’ often beleaguered and ignored subreddit moderators.
But what really drove the revolt was the resentment many Redditors feel every time the site admins make any efforts at all to rein in the worst tendencies of Reddit’s regulars — the most recent “outrage” being Reddit’s banning of the FatPeopleHate subreddit and an assortment of others because they were encouraging real world harassment.
It certainly didn’t help, as far as Redditors were concerned, that she was a woman. The very thought of being bossed around by a woman is anathema to a shockingly large number of Redditors. Naturally, she’s being replaced by a dude, Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, who promises to continue many of the same policies as Pao, but who will presumably be more palatable to the site’s fragile male userbase.
The abuse against Pao continued even after her resignation. In the thread announcing her replacement, this obnoxious comment at one point sported more than 1500 upvotes:
Only after someone pointed out that the commenter, who named himself after the racist Charleston church shooter, was in fact an unironically racist moderator of Reddit’s outrageously racist CoonTown subreddit did the comment end up with more downvotes than upvotes.
Stay classy, Reddit!
EDIT: Added links and a bit about her replacement.
“[i]f 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.”
I think they really don’t know the idea of a ‘great’ website. And they are right, it will never be a great community. Stay classy indeed.
Oooooo, I bet that’ll scare them.
The terrorists won. Colour me disgusted.
Reddit’s hook, just like 4chan or any of the other chans is that it gives shitty people a place to gather. Take away that, and it’ll start hemorrhaging users. I’m afraid that this is one turd that simply can’t be polished.
I don’t suppose this will encourage the Reddit higher-ups to consider curbing the harassment on their site? No?
Fixed it.
I’m afraid reddit will go the way of digg, and wind up dropping the comments sections because awful people will want to stay awful.
And some people wonder why I won’t even go near reddit when someone I like is doing an AMA. I adore the Myth Busters, but … just no.
What’s with the “she ripped off firefighters and they can’t retire now” comments I’m seeing over there?
This is nothing to do with her gender. She got hounded out because she’s a scumbag.
And yet another woman is driven away from tech.
I think it’s time to stop visiting Reddit. I have fun mocking the worst of Reddit with the other feminazis in ShitRedditSays, but I can’t continue to give traffic to a site filled with manchildren that routinely harass women.
Fuck you, Reddit.
People were harassing and hurling abuse towards Pao long before last week’s Reddit Blackout. If anyone remembers when FPH was banned, the front page was filled with anti-Pao sentiments, with subreddits like /r/EllenPaoRapedMe hitting /r/all.
The frustrating thing is that moderators had legitimate complaints RE the blackout. The problems with administrator/moderator communication and broken moderation tools can be traced to Yishan several years ago. The problem is that the misogynists and bigots of Reddit co-opted the protest and used it to further hurl abuse against a CEO that they hated because of her gender and because of her race.
The new CEO isn’t just a man. He’s also white. Both of these traits were traits that Pao did not have, and now we see the end result of the racism and the misogyny that’s been harbored and festered on the site.
If Reddit is the “front page of the internet” that is perhaps the singular greatest reason I can think of to absolutely shut down the internet as a failed experiment, dominated by assholes.
Is anyone else hoping that the first move that the new guy makes is to drop the banhammer on everyone that gave Ellen ****?
@anon
Gave Ellen asterisks? What? Does she have hall of fame records I’m not aware of?
@pandapool I don’t want to risk getting modded.
@dudeinthewoods They’re accusing her husband of running a ponzi scheme that stole firefighters retirement.
There’s some good content on reddit, but honestly, it’s not worth the rampant misogyny. I was just on a thread discussing Lewis’s Law and I got: an angry, 50-year-old Scottish man telling me that there is no such thing as sexism based on random tweets he found and other biased anecdotal evidence; some kid telling me gender doesn’t matter and all feminists care about is themselves, because why aren’t they concerned about him and how affirmative action kept him out of getting scholarships???; and a guy telling me men are treated much worse in society than women and women just have victim complexes.
I don’t know why I commented at all.
Profanity is fine. Mentioning R0n P@ul is not.
I love our community!
@anon
We fucking swear all the fucking time here. Just don’t use derogatory terms and slurs and you’re all the fuck right.
anon, don’t worry. I swear all the time. 😀
The only times I’ve had posts put in moderation, it was because I was quoting a slur. Slurs get you modded. Fucking profanity and shit won’t. 😛
Also your first post is automatically moderated because we get so many trolls here.
That too. Forgot. It’s been a while, and I’ve been approved for posting here for over a year.
I saw a troll comment on the Gawker post about this from an angry redditor. He mocked Gawker for calling the treatment of Pao racist and sexist. And then went on to call her Chairman Pao. The percentage of entitled man babies with zero self awareness is just too high for me to ever consider posting there. Despite the existence of good subs.
Anyone who says that the anti-Pao thing was not racist or sexist are either lying or have their heads so far up their butts that they’ve become atomic size.
I hope the new CEO steps up the attacks on these disgusting subreddits. He can start by putting CoonTown on the chopping block.
That comment from the douchecanoe with the racist shooter’s name? The likes have at least gone negative at the time I’m posting this (-774), but people have actually given money for gilding it (x6 right now, as opposed to the screened x2). *sigh + facepalm*