Pao! Right in the Kisser: Reddit jerkwads celebrate CEO’s resignation after a week of abuse

I argued that if you run a community widely known for inflicting sexist and racist harassment on numerous other people, it is not reasonable to be surprised when it happens to you. A lot of people here are refusing to acknowledge that there is a significant difference getting caught in a bear-trap someone laid out for you and accidentally stepping in a trap you set up in your neighbor’s yard.

The victim-blaming, it burns.

As has already been pointed out, it’s inappropriate to claim schadenfreude over Pao’s experiences of sexism and racism from the clusterfuck known as Reddit. She attempted to enact change and stem the tide of harassing and abusive behaviour during her very limited time there. Making the simplistic argument of “She contributed to the toxic culture by dint of being it’s CEO” fails to take into account some very significant context.

The best way to change racist and misogynistic culture at reddit is for women and POC to turn down leadership roles there.

@rationalleft
This is not a discussion about Ellen Pao and whether or not she got what’s coming to her. You don’t know her motivations for taking the position, and neither do we. It’s also not relevant, and it’s none of our business. We can debate her responsibility and complicity in fostering this toxic community, but only if we separate it from a discussion about whether that’s connected to how this community singles one non-white woman out for actions and policies that have been decided by the board. This latter discussion is moot, and it can only result in victim-blaming.

This is a discussion about how a significant and loud part of reddit and other assorted internet assholes think it’s “criticism” to harass a person – usually a woman – in a way that’s deeply personal, extremely threatening and that should be punishable by law.

But as long as we’re speculating: given her relative prominence for suing her ex-Employer for what seems to have been a toxic work environment, what makes you think that a)she had a lot of choice in what job she was going to take, and b)what makes you think reddit didn’t specifically hire her to consult on how to deal with this toxic community, and as a signal to critics that they were willing to clean up? And promise her to support her in doing this?

I don’t know if this is approaching the truth, but neither do you. So don’t blame her for ethical choices you don’t know she made. That’s why I’m saying this discussion is moot and the only effect to ever come out of it is victim blaming à la: “Well, she got it coming to her. Karma”

@rationalleft:

Are we playing textwall? Cool. My turn.

You are ignoring or misinterpreting my point. I did not argue “Racist harassment is justified against Pao because she allowed racism to flourish.” I argued that if you run a community widely known for inflicting sexist and racist harassment on numerous other people, it is not reasonable to be surprised when it happens to you. A lot of people here are refusing to acknowledge that there is a significant difference getting caught in a bear-trap someone laid out for you and accidentally stepping in a trap you set up in your neighbor’s yard. If you are the CEO of a website, then by nature you are actively contributing to the operation and continuation of the website, and therefore you cannot absolve yourself from the actions which occur on and because of said website. People are pointing out that it might be impossible to simultaneously keep the site going and stop the gushing stream of hate and violence flowing out of it – if this is the case, then it is your ethical responsibility to pull the plug on the whole operation if you are in a position to do so. Yes, maybe she would have gotten fired if she tried to clean house properly, but 1) she signed up for the job with full knowledge of what it entailed 2) you don’t get a free pass to do morally wrong things because it’s your job.

Sorry, no.

Pao’s job wasn’t to police content or to keep the mods in line. Pao’s job was to sweet-talk the shareholders, make sure the advertising revenue keeps coming, and to oversee actual operational issues like moving the offices to San Francisco, hiring new staff, making sure the suppliers meet their KPIs and suchlike. For a large website like Reddit, the job of a CEO has basically nothing to do with the actual content of the site.

But enough of that. Let’s break down what you said.

You are ignoring or misinterpreting my point. I did not argue “Racist harassment is justified against Pao because she allowed racism to flourish.” I argued that if you run a community widely known for inflicting sexist and racist harassment on numerous other people, it is not reasonable to be surprised when it happens to you.

The following three statements are logically identical and can be substituted freely for one another.

“Pao deserved harassment.”

“Pao had the harassment coming to her.”

“Pao should not have been surprised when harassment happened to her.”

If you say any of these three things, you are in effect saying all of them. This is not misinterpretation. This is simply understanding logical reasoning.

A lot of people here are refusing to acknowledge that there is a significant difference getting caught in a bear-trap someone laid out for you and accidentally stepping in a trap you set up in your neighbor’s yard.

Pao never laid any bear traps for anyone, to the best of my knowledge. As far as I am aware she never participated in any raids or brigading eiither. She did not spread stolen nudes, drop dox, spread paedophile imagery or incite racial violence. She did not write essays urging the murder of gay people or the rape of women. She did not do anything else which is morally comparable. As such, I’m afraid I’m going to have to accuse you of making a false equivalence.

What did Pao do, then? She sold a product to people. This product is called “a place where you can post stuff and other people can read it.” Most of what people used this product for was simply banal and derivative, but some of it had the additional characteristics of hatefulness and toxicity. To accuse a merchant of complicity in everything people use their product for is nonsensical: one might as well accuse a paper factory of being a den of racists because someone bought their paper to print copies of Mein Kampf, or an electricity company of being misogynist because it powers a computer on which someone reads Return of Kings, or indeed a plastics company because they make the parts for a smartphone which is used to send harassing tweets. Nobody is for a moment suggesting that your logic should apply to any other field, so I am unsure of why you apply it here.

Pao did not lay a bear trap. At best, she ran a steel mill which made the steel out of which the bear trap was made. Does that mean she deserves to get caught in it? No, of course not.

People are pointing out that it might be impossible to simultaneously keep the site going and stop the gushing stream of hate and violence flowing out of it – if this is the case, then it is your ethical responsibility to pull the plug on the whole operation if you are in a position to do so.

This is Sith logic: you’re giving a choice between absolutes in a situation which is not absolute.

Expecting Pao to disband the whole of Reddit simply because she was unable to chase the scum out of it is absurd; by that logic one might as well charge Google to turn off the internet because people use it for unacceptable purposes, or expect all books everywhere to be destroyed simply because Mein Kampf exists.

Yes, maybe she would have gotten fired if she tried to clean house properly, but 1) she signed up for the job with full knowledge of what it entailed 2) you don’t get a free pass to do morally wrong things because it’s your job.

I agree with both (1) and (2) as statements shorn of context, but I disagree that they’re sensible things to say about this particular case.

Firstly, Pao didn’t sign up for this job with full knowledge of what it entailed. Her job was, from what I understand, to keep the advertisers and shareholders happy whilst moving all the staff to San Francisco. That sounds like a difficult job in and of itself, and that she tried to introduce some diversity and some tastefulness into the site at the same time speaks well of her: I certainly couldn’t pull off that workload.

Trying to remove the poison from the site was, and I feel I should point this out again, not her fucking job. It became her fucking job all of a sudden, but it was not what she was originally hired for and I’d be surprised if it was a large part of the original job description. You cannot argue that it was what she took the job for or that she was fully aware at the time that it would become the standard by which she was judged.

Secondly, and I feel I need to point this out again, Ms Pao was not doxing or harassing anyone. As far as I’m aware nothing she did crossed any moral lines, either as an individual or as a CEO. If she did cross moral lines then absolutely I agree with you, she would not get a free pass on that, but that’s not the case here.

My textwall’s now done. It’s your serve.

Probably many already know this, as Gamerghazi and this site have some user overlap, but it appears that under the new CEO, reddit will be even harder to mod, and even easier for bigots to brigade: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/3cxzf0/the_new_reddit_ceo_does_not_want_to_ban_subs_like/

Seems like the ones who actually care about ethics in forum moderation are the ones discussing moves to other sites that will let them curb the bigotry, harassment, and doxxing, rather than remove the few tools they have.

Probably many already know this, as Gamerghazi and this site have some user overlap, but it appears that under the new CEO, reddit will be even harder to mod, and even easier for bigots to brigade: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/3cxzf0/the_new_reddit_ceo_does_not_want_to_ban_subs_like/

I was going to say that this was to be expected, as the new CEO is the same guy who was responsible for /r/Jailbait (the now-banned pedo subreddit, for those who are unfamiliar with Reddit’s history) becoming such a problem, but…

Well, “No more way for moderators to easily, permanently delete comments!” is just such an obviously terrible idea for anyone who has thought about it for more than five minutes. I do hope he’s just speaking off the cuff, and none of this is ever going to see the light of day.

Incidentally, the last several CEOs of Reddit are now “joking” that this was all an elaborate con to trick their shareholders into restoring control to the original team: https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszjqg2

For those who need a brief summary of who the heck those people are, and are willing to trust my faulty memory: Yishan is the old CEO who abruptly resigned over disagreements over the offices; ekjp is Ellen Pao; Sam Altman is one of the co-founders of Reddit, who was just made the new CEO despite his past history with the company.

I’m assuming that they’re joking, but it still seems to me to be a pretty reckless thing to joke about… I’d say that their legal department is probably sending them memos asking them to please stop, but I don’t think they have a legal department.

The idea that it’s all just financial misses the point. She is receiving mass amounts of hate from a userbase of a site she is tasked with making financially viable.

Their behaviour toward her is also the behaviour that gives Reddit it’s shitcan reputation and drives away the very investors that she needs to bring in.

It’s two heads of the same hydra.

@ghilie

That GamerGhazi link is headed ‘The new Reddit CEO does not want to ban subs like Coontown’

Here is what Huffman (new CEO) said about ‘Coontown’:
The content there is reprehensible, as I’m sure any reasonable person would agree, but if it were appropriately quarantined, it would not have a negative impact on other specific individuals in the same way FPH does.
Source: http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman_the_new_ceo_of_reddit_ama/cszuhho?context=1

Here is what Ellen Pao said about ‘Coontown’:
We’re banning behavior, not ideas. While we don’t agree with the content of the subreddit, we don’t have reports of it harassing individuals.
http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/cs21aj4?context=1

As I’ve said before, I think Pao did some good things and obviously there can be no justification for the abuse she received, but I can’t see the difference between her policy and Huffman’s on this specific issue. It seems to me like everyone (both Freeze Peach crazies on Reddit and Social Justicey types here and at GG want to make the difference between Huffman and Pao a lot more black and white than it actually is. I’m sure there will be differences between them, but the Pao=SocJus vs. Huffman=FreezePeach narrative doesn’t hold water.

That’s fair, I probably overstated things with the SocJus line. However, there does seem to be a sense of ‘Reddit is going to hell with the new CEO’ in earlier comments which is at odds with the fact that their positions on many of the key issues are identical. Huffman seems to support the FPH et al banning which happened under Pao’s watch, for example.

Goddamn quote monster….

For those who are unfamiliar with common usage of the English language in the early 21st century:

Jesus Christ, if you need to sniff your own farts, please don’t do it where we can see it.