"We Screwed Up," Says Reddit CEO In Formal Apology 452
An anonymous reader writes: After moderators locked up some of Reddit's most popular pages in protest against the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, and an online petition asking the company to fire CEO Ellen Pao reached more than 175,000 signatures over the weekend, Pao has issued an apology. The statement reads in part: "We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years. We haven't communicated well, and we have surprised moderators and the community with big changes. We have apologized and made promises to you, the moderators and the community, over many years, but time and again, we haven't delivered on them. When you've had feedback or requests, we haven't always been responsive. The mods and the community have lost trust in me and in us, the administrators of reddit. Today, we acknowledge this long history of mistakes. We are grateful for all you do for reddit, and the buck stops with me."
Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiring Ellen Pao.
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much. Think of how bad it has to be for her to actually be admitting fault? We're talking about a chick that fired people that had to go off to chemo.
If she's apologizing it means that she's afraid. And at this point given her long series of unacceptable moves... that's just blood in the water.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much. Think of how bad it has to be for her to actually be admitting fault? We're talking about a chick that fired people that had to go off to chemo.
If she's apologizing it means that she's afraid. And at this point given her long series of unacceptable moves... that's just blood in the water.
She's a corporate management type. Her apology might have been written by a crisis management PR firm.
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly... but for it to be issued at all is a first out of her so far as I know.
Reddit was started as an experiment in free speech.
To the extent I care about this at all, it is in that context. I want the internet to be free for people to say whatever they want.
Anything from criticism of those in power to calling some random twit a cocktoddler. The fat shaming board was gross... I get no joy out of making fun of other people's misfortunes that haven't done anything to me. But... I wouldn't ban or censor speech.
This whole different between punching up or down... It doesn't matter. Everyone has a right to speak and think whatever they want. You don't like what someone has to say... then use your right to speak to say so and use your right to think to judge them. But you don't censor them.
My issue with Pao is that she's got no problem with censorship. And all things being equal nothing else matters to me on the topic.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
WTF?!? If you think reddit trying to silence FatPeopleHate was a bad decision, just wait until you see the fallout from this new "policy" of yours.
This is truly a sad day for Slashdot. Shame on you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Old unmoderated media are still all out there - usenet, irc channels, or non-mainstream imageboards if people want it in hip setting. No moderation has also some pretty nasty drawbacks, and suddenly muh free speech types will be offended by what happens when there truly i
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:4, Insightful)
your fire analogy isn't applicable to the internet.
As to censoring thought, if you censor speech you can control how people think. That's most of the point.
Look at any autocracy and the point is to so bath the people in propaganda and control them to such an extent that you can control how and what they think.
Think about it.... I mean... that is the whole point of propaganda.
When one side is allowed to talk and no one else is allowed to talk... you can brain wash everyone. And the brain washing is the point. If you control speech you can control thought.
As to the owner of a site... not applicable to social networks.
There is this silly argument that only the government can censor. This is a misunderstanding.
The reality is that only the government is legally forbidden to censor but that doesn't mean that no one else can actually censor someone else.
If I tell you to shut up or I'll do something you don't like... I've censored you.
Now is that appropriate under some circumstances? Sure... context matters. But there are some things to keep in mind.
1. Am I being forced to listen to this person or am I simply offended that other people are choosing to listen to them? If I can't avoid this person for some reason then censoring might be reasonable. If I am not forced to listen to them then censoring is almost always tyrannical.
2. Is there a legitimate safety concern with this person speaking. Fire in a theater is an example... saying "we should kill this person" is an example... saying "so and so is a cunt" is not an example (yes I used the C word... gasp).
3. Have you misrepresented the purpose of your venue? For example, if I open an ice cream parlor or a hardware store... the point of it is not for people to come in, stand on a soap box, and start screaming their opinions at each other. However, if I set up a coffee shop and I'm trying to promote it as a "salon" or I have a pub that I try to make into something of a community center then I've created an expectation that people are going to be able to express themselves. Reddit... has done that in spades. Policing opinions on reddit when its clearly a clearing house for people to express themselves or talk about stuff is tyrannical.
As to concepts of being able to do certain things speaking of ignorance... not really... you're just making a series of argument from absurdity arguments... and then attempting to conflate that with what amounts to corporate whitewashing of internet culture likely to improve the look and marketability of a venue that only obtained popularity and thus value in the first place by inviting speech of all kinds.
The thing that is so funny about this crap is that the nannies and the censors really are the least internet aware people no matter how many twitter accounts and how much time they spend on face book.
You don't get it.
"The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmour
If Reddit turns into a progressive hugbox then large portions of the community will just go elsewhere. There are lots of other "me too" type sites that would sell their immortal souls to literal satan to get Reddit's traffic. The sites that remain relevant are the ones that don't undermine their core utility. Reddit's censoring of boards is about as destructive to reddit as Google censoring search results. Imagine for a moment if google filtered porn searches out of their system but bing didn't.
Do you begin to see the issue? Reddit is going to destroy itself if it doesn't wise up.
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree in general with your philosophy of free speech, however, in this case, claiming that what reddit did is "censorship" is a bit misleading. This is Slashdot so I'm quite suprised you've been moderated so highly and that nobody has pointed it out yet; on the other hand perhaps many 'dotters just aren't aware of exactly what happened.
The /r/fatpeoplehate (FPH) subreddit wasn't closed because the community and admins don't like the crap they spew. That would have been censorship, but that's not why the subreddit was closed. FPH was closed because its subscribers started spreading their hate into other subreddits and harassing other users via private messages. reddit was fine with FPH existing and being content with sharing their hate with each other, and they did for a long time. But recently they broke the rules, so they got their subreddit taken away.
That's not censorship, that's compartmentalisation. FPH was allowed to exist and to be dicks by themselves in their own little corner of reddit. That's the point of subreddits. Again, reddit knew about FPH and was OK with its crap as long as it kept to itself. Only after they tried to spread their bullshit was the subreddit closed.
Re: (Score:3)
hmmm... lets look at the legal code:
http://definitions.uslegal.com... [uslegal.com]
So, first degree harassment requires some sort of legitimate physical threat.
The second degree harassment appears to include anything that annoys someone.
I mean... technically you'd be guilty of that against me... you annoy me all the time. :-p
Frankly, I think the second degree harassment is so loose in its definition that it's very vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. I mean... I could shut people up all day by citing harassment s
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, no.
An apology just means that there was a significant enough signal to trigger a publicity action. The real apology is "we're sorry that you don't approve of things we're doing" not "we're sorry that we did things you don't approve of."
Re: (Score:3)
She's sorry [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I would sue her for discrimination , ultimate karma
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
[triggering intensifies]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just people in /r/theredpill. The entire site is unhappy with Ellen Pao.
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:4, Informative)
And by doing so Reddit became "the front page of the Internet". It had, by its own account, 163,966,958 unique visitors, 7,086,828,967 pages viewed, 8,384 communities powered, with 3,080,084 users logged in last month. Much of the site run for FREE by dedicated mods.
Now, they're are their way to becoming yet another SJW site whose administrators hate their own userbase.
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Informative)
And by doing so Reddit became "the front page of the Internet".
Except it's actually not, and titles like that lend credence to the view that Reddit users are entitled self-absorbed people in general.
Top sites on the internet, according to Alexa:
1. Google.com (note, this is the actual "front page of the internet")
2. Facebook.com (this could also be easily considered the "front page of the internet")
3. Youtube.com (yet another "front page" contender)
4. Baidu.com (how many Reddit users have ever seen the fourth most-used web site?)
5. Yahoo.com (almost literally "the front page of the internet" as the default home page for many people, much more popular than reddit.com)
6. Amazon.com
7. Wikipedia.org
8. Qq.com (I've only ever heard of this site in passing a few times, and it's still way more popular than reddit.com)
9. Taobao.com (shopping for Chinese folk)
10. Twitter.com (this site is used by Reddit users who want to express their righteous indignation)
11. Google.co.in (the Indian version of Google is significantly more popular than Reddit)
12. Live.com (apparently this is still a thing; significantly more popular than Reddit)
13. Sina.com.cn (Chinese messaging, apparently)
14. Linkedin.com (this is where Reddit moderators can find employment)
15. Weibo.com (this site is so Chinese that the Alexa description is written in Chinese; significantly more popular than Reddit)
16. Yahoo.co.jp (the Japanese version of Yahoo is also more popular than Reddit)
17. Google.co.jp
18. Ebay.com
19. Yandex.ru
20. Vk.com (Russian social network; more popular than Reddit)
21. Blogspot.com
22. Tmall.com (more Chinese shopping)
23. Google.de (German Google is more popular than Reddit)
24. Hao123.com (the only thing I know about this site is that it is more popular than Reddit)
25. T.co (a shorter twitter.com URL domain is more popular than Reddit)
26. Msn.com (this is a site built for the purpose of making Internet Explorer painfully slow to start; more popular than Reddit)
27. Instagram.com
28. Google.co.uk (the Google portal for the United Kingdom [pop. ~64 million] is more popular than Reddit)
29. Bing.com (search engine primarily used by people who don't know how to change the default search engine for IE; more popular than Reddit)
30. Amazon.co.jp (the Japanese Amazon portal is more popular than...)
31. Reddit.com ( "The Front Page Of The Internet!!!" claims its frenzied, self-important user base)
32. Google.com.br
So, there you go. Your "front page of the internet" is right there between Japanese Amazon and Brazilian Google. Now please excuse me if I don't give a shit what your CEO or user base are doing with their time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG, do you know where Alexa gets its analytics from?
Alexa's traffic estimates are based on data from our global traffic panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions. In addition, we gather much of our traffic data from direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script on their site and certify their metrics.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously, do know ANYONE who has the Alexa toolbar, or browser extension installed? Ye
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe because no one wants to spend money advertising on a site associated with sexist, racist, immature dudebros.
Although that's where you're most likely to find people susceptible to advertising.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe because no one wants to spend money advertising on a site associated with sexist, racist, immature dudebros.
The fact that you use "dude" and "bro" as pejorative terms shows that you're the sexist one.
Re: (Score:3)
So says "anonymous coward".
Did you not hear that if we force everyone to use their real identity online that will fix all the problems?
Re: (Score:3)
That seems like a rather large demographic. Why would targeting it be a problem?
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem is that they are running a web site that caters to ignorant and petulant children who believe they know all there is to know and deserve all there is to have.
No, the biggest problem is attempting to monetize a fairly long-established platform that is highly dependent on volunteers, who do not appreciate being disrespected despite their commitment, coupled with participants that do not like changes in things that they have grown accustomed to. It's further complicated by most companies' desire to grow, but to grow they have to get rid of elements of their businesses or customer base that detract from outside investment. Slashdot has experienced that last aspect, as has Fark, and Digg, and many other aggregation services. Many of these entities do not survive their attempt to morph into the mainstream, yet everyone still tries.
Without even looking at the individual people manage or working for them, Reddit screwed up. They've tried to change too many things too quickly and have taken their moderation staff and user base for-granted. They've also completely failed to consider that just as quickly a one website may rise to prominence, another may equally quickly supplant it. Look at Facebook replacing MySpace for example. Reddit may well find its users going elsewhere if someone else manages to build something that they find familiar without all of the current baggage.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't tried it yet, but this looks interesting: http://getaether.net/ [getaether.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Though for Aether in particular, I have to call BS. Saying that it doesn't use servers is like someone trying to argue that virtual machines don't ultimately have hard disk drives. They may well be abstracted-out, but they're fundamentally still there.
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
They've also completely failed to consider that just as quickly a one website may rise to prominence, another may equally quickly supplant it. Look at Facebook replacing MySpace for example.
Wouldn't a more relevant example of this be Reddit replacing Digg?
facebook changed. And grew. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lest you forget, facebook underwent several major changes, including interface and privacy policy. People riled up. Yet, they maintain a stronghold in social media at ~70% in 2014 (Pew Research Center, US Census Bureau report on internet & media).
You can change and grow, but you have to do it strategically and sometimes, only one thing at a time. Ebay once had a big facelift in UX design (not including the logo), and people were very upset. They changed to the older design almost immediately. Over the c
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the biggest problem is attempting to monetize a fairly long-established platform that is highly dependent on volunteers, who do not appreciate being disrespected despite their commitment, coupled with participants that do not like changes in things that they have grown accustomed to.
No, its not even that. The biggest problem is that neither Ellen Pao (current CEO), nor co-founder Alex Ohanian actually understand how their product works! They do not understand the operation of their own business.
These mods do the grunt work (for free). They eat their own reddit dogfood. Not only did management remove the only person (from the mods POV) that actually grasped how to PROPERLY do the operation, management didn't even understand that there had to be a replacement plan already in place. You can only understand this if you've ever worked in a department where a radical change has been made, and you knew that the change absolutely could not work. Most of the time, you don't have points in the company, so you just start polishing your resume and start making popcorn for the disaster flick that is about to commence. But these people aren't paid; they do it for their love of the finished product. What management did was take their many hours of unpaid work, kill the beautiful thing they created, and watch the killers plant a zombie parasite into it, and expect to see their dead masterpiece masquerading as the real thing. The mods then reacted in the only manner which they could.
That's what made n0thing's (Ohanian) attempt at damage control so damaging. It wasn't that Ohanian was inappropriately flippant. It was that the answers he gave to pointed questions demonstrated that he didn't have a clue what management did wrong.
My source of disgust is directed towards the tech media punditry. Because what they're demonstrating is that they don't have a clue what reddit management did wrong. They're just either covering up management's (Pao's) fuckup in the name of professional "sisterhood", or just care about how another startup is going to have lost investor money.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't actually understand this. It's one thing to give specifics about a termination; it's another to give people a general idea.
Even when CEO's are forced to quit, they will give a boilerplate reason, such as "I'm leaving to pursue other interests."
Can you provide a legal foundation for how Reddit might be at risk of litigation of saying something like "She was let go because we disagreed with her vision of how to operate Reddit."
In what world could reddit be sued for such a bland statement?
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:4, Insightful)
> They've also completely failed to consider that just as quickly a one website may rise to prominence, another may equally quickly supplant it. Look at Facebook replacing MySpace for example.
Are you deliberately avoiding the elephant in the room? Reddit themselves owe their initial success to Digg spectacularly shooting themselves in the foot and then hobbling around trying to insist it's just a flesh wound.
All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again... again...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The biggest problem is that they are running a web site that caters to ignorant and petulant children who believe they know all there is to know and deserve all there is to have.
Replace "Website" with "Business" and you've described literally every corporation in existence. If it were easy, we'd all run one.
Re: (Score:2)
and since you did not end you comment is some form of you have outed yourself
Huh?
Re:Your biggest screw up (Score:4, Funny)
In the words of Fox Mulder: Trust No One.
Re: (Score:3)
Well he did not hack the NSA, he just basically used his rental sysadmin credentials to copy stuff. That would be like Mark Zuckerberg "leaking" Facebook data.
Resignation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless that's followed by her resignation, it's a whole lot of horse crap.
Re:Resignation? (Score:5, Funny)
Today, we acknowledge this long history of mistakes. We are grateful for all you do for reddit, and the buck stops with me.
"... Which is why today I am implementing a system of regular public apologies, to be made by me on a quarterly basis and as needed when we really fuck things up.
I want you to know that accountability and leadership aren't just buzz words here at Reddit, they are very real goals that I have delegated to a very real junior staffer, Ted.
So in the future, when Reddit screws the pooch, you can rest assured that I will take full responsibility by publicly apologizing and then firing Ted."
Re: (Score:2)
So in the future, when Reddit screws the pooch, you can rest assured that I will
Re: (Score:3)
I'm reminded of that episode of South Park with the CEO saying "We're sorry" [youtube.com] over and over again while not doing anything of actual substance.
Re: (Score:3)
"And we're also very glad that we're still moving forward at 'Reddit Speed(tm)'
Reddit Speed: noun
A sufficient metaphorical velocity to orbit accountability without ever intersecting with it.
(Adapted from a joke inside my company about moving at [company name] speed)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. Reddit isn't serious about anything until she's gone.
Anyone who ever subscribed to Star Wars Galaxies experienced this exact kind of management. SOE endlessly would apologize for their "lack of communication" then proceed to continue on their destructive changes no one liked not altering their course one degree.
Re:Resignation? (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite "apology" is the back-handed "We're sorry you misunderstood us" variety. But the "Mistakes were made (by someone presumably), but we're listening" "apology" is good too.
Wow. Lip service! (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically unless they rehire Taylor or Pao steps down, this is just a bunch of community knob-slobbery with no actual value behind it whatsoever.
Re:Wow. Lip service! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wow. Lip service! (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically unless they rehire Taylor or Pao steps down, this is just a bunch of community knob-slobbery with no actual value behind it whatsoever.
I keep hearing this statement, but we've no idea why she was fired. She could have came to work high on cocaine, started doing shots in the break room and then admitted embezzling millions for the company. Reddit can't legal comment on it, which makes sense.
The real problem here is that they had such an "indispensable" employee in the first place. Even worse, they seemed to have no idea how important she was. They should have know what she did, why she did it, and what to do in the event something happened to her. This is Business management 101
Too little too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Her management style reeks of VC meddling. It's all sanitize and monetize now. Weird shadowbanning, giving some offensive subreddits the boot but not others, etc.
I predict a gradual exodus. The cool kids tend to move on anyway once their parents have arrived.
-B
Re:Too little too late (Score:4, Informative)
Take the AMAs for example. When Victoria was there, the mods could do what they do: verify the person's ID, make sure it happens on time, set up the schedules, etc. When they fired Victoria, the link between the admins and moderators was gone. That left the mods with no good way to do their jobs and make all that content the company is so eager to monetize. The mgmt team shot themselves in the foot, in other words, and now all the mods are getting are platitudes and vague promises without any deliverables, timetables, etc.
More people will likely start caring when the overall quality of content goes down as mods get more and more burnt out.
-B
Re: (Score:3)
Apologizing for the Catalyst (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The firing doesn't even matter, it's the lack of a plan. If you're going to have one person be such a key piece in arguably one of your most popular subs, you better have a really good plan in place in the event they quit/resign/are hit by a bus. There wasn't
There wasn't...what?
Posting to Slashdot on a cell phone while crossing the street wasn't a good idea...
Re: (Score:3)
YES! This is the issue that investors should care about.
And the reason why they didn't have a transition plan is that no one in management, not even co-founder Ohanian, understands how reddit works anymore (at least with the iAMA). And apparently management doesn't grasp basic HR procedure.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Posted without a hint of irony... (Score:2)
Sorta like Dice and BETA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Digg 2.0 (Score:3, Informative)
Why reddit and not forums/usnet? (Score:3)
Anyone? I know someone people all over it but I noticed most of them are a few generations after me. I looked at it and it looked like a threaded forum site.
Re: (Score:2)
It is basically a threaded forum site, but one that has scaled amazingly well. There's about 10k active subreddits, and something like 850k total. There's 190m posts and 1.7b comments, serving up 7.5b pageviews a month. Do you know of some forum software that can handle that? Or a usenet server/client that wouldn't completely crap itself performing the same tasks as what Reddit does?
Re:Why reddit and not forums/usnet? (Score:4, Informative)
Why not Forums?
VBulletin/phpBB style discussion boards are great, and there's usually one for basically-whatever you're into - cars, computers, pets, food, crafts, wedding planning. It's not uncommon for a given user to be a part of at least one such community. The problem is that it's a bit more difficult to 'channel surf' that way. If a user participates in a discussion thread in Alpha Forum, they'd have to log in separately to Bravo Forum to participate there. This limits the scope of topics that can be viewed at a given clip. Similarly, different forums have different rules or customs. Some are particularly strict about citing sources for claims, others are super strict in the profanity, others use a 'reputation' point system while others simply use 'thanks' or nothing at all; Reddit is at least a smidge more consistent site-wide with its rules.
Why not Usenet?
I'm still a fan, personally. comp.misc has some interesting discussions, and misc.legal.moderated is frequently some fascinating reading. There are a few groups related to video games and Doctor Who that have interesting discussions, the latter particularly after new episodes air. The fact that a user identify is basically universal is helpful to keep the playing field level. Usenet has its own list of problems though. First and foremost, usenet is something that itself needs to be sought after to a certain extent at this point; few ISPs offer access to it, and neither Windows nor OSX ship with a client. This is further complicated by the fact that a "binary client" and a "text client" are frequently different pieces of software, usually cost money on top of existing internet subscriptions, few real-life friends tend to be able to share the experience, and the search results for the term in Google are usually affiliated with warez, so getting people into it is its own challenge to begin with. Moreover, usenet is much more susceptible to spam, it's not possible to share in-line images or youtube clips (like it or not, responding with memes and animated GIFs is a common practice these days), and it's not possible to 'upvote' posts as to indicate the quality of a particular contribution. Put it all together, and Usenet is a wonderful niche that Reddit simply does better for the majority of internet users.
Chairman Pao (Score:5, Informative)
What a piece of work.
http://www.vanityfair.com/styl... [vanityfair.com]
Does Dice own Redddit too? (Score:2)
What are they mad about? (Score:2)
But the whole point was Victoria's firing (Score:2)
It's not a bad apology I guess, but it still seems to ignore the main reason for all the trouble-- the firing of Victoria. I'm not sure whose anger she thinks she's answering.
Until they (Score:5, Informative)
1. Hire that Taylor back or
2. Explain why she was fired
They've done nothing at all. And the only thing to apologize for other than firing a well liked person for no apparent reason is the fact that Pao laughed at her users to their faces. And no one is going to believe that she means an apology for that.
What is that? (Score:3)
Is it something like facebook or twitter? Don't us them either.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a user driven site. The users provided much of the value. The users were pissed off. The users struck back. Now the business is scared. What's the problem?
Re: (Score:3)
It's more accurate to replace "users" with "mods" in your post. The users were just along for the ride in the current/latest shitstorm. Most of them don't care.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You used "reddit" and "value" in the same sentence, but forgot the /sarcasm
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Found Pao's Slashdot account....
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Reddit is absolutely allowed to manage their employees as they see fit. The mods of Reddit, in turn, are allowed to exercise the powers that Reddit has given them, and to express their discontent.
Reddit is free to dispense with the services of mods and pay people to monitor and moderate all the conversations that go on, so that the corporation can maintain complete control. If they want to take advantage of the time and effort of volunteers (how many? thousands?), then they have to work cooperatively with those volunteers.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not about wether or not everyone's within their rights, nobody contests that the mods don't have the right to do what they did, I think. The question, more for Ellen Pao and the mods than us, is wether it's actually appropriate or good community conduct to shut down the whole website because she decides to let someone go.
Nobody's going to work for Reddit if they're told at the door: "We'll keep you around as long as some splinter cell of mods doesn't start a flashmob against you. And we try to fire b
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In California at least, there are strict legal protections for people who are fired, their boss cannot necessarily talk about why or how someone is fired in public, not without courting significant legal liability. So I'm not sure what "transparency" or "involving the community" can practically accomplish, without getting everyone tied up in torts.
Then the business needs to either spend the money in-advance to be able to mitigate the problems associated with staff turnover, or needs to be ready to absorb the damage incurred when that staff change occurs.
Reddit is finding out how much damage can be incurred when a popular employee is let-go. I expect that this is far, FAR more damage than they expected, but that just goes to demonstrate the disconnect between those that own/manage the business that is Reddit and those that moderate and use Reddit
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Reddit may eventually have to decide if they're an actual business that's supposed to make money or a hip BBS. The two identities are sorta in tension and I'm not sure it's resolvable.
Re: (Score:2)
Reddit may eventually have to decide if they're an actual business that's supposed to make money or a hip BBS. The two identities are sorta in tension and I'm not sure it's resolvable.
Well, you're not going to make money if you continue to arbitrarily ban things that you find offensive or someone else might find offensive. There are things on the internet I don't like. I just don't go to those sites. I don't demand that they take those sites down. Aside from that, I don't know how a BBS makes money these days with ad block, etc, unless they're selling user info, which would probably go over huge with the reddit crowd.
Re: (Score:2)
That's pretty much everyone's procedure, so Reddit's job is to make sure reddit.com doesn't become "one of those sites" for a sufficiently large group of people.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
This is sort of Slashdot's problem too; there's an upper bound on how much traffic geek news can drive, and rather than being content to have the best geek-news site such that it draws the most traffic from this niche, they keep trying to introduce non-geek elements, which causes userbase angst, drives away newcomers, and drives away existing users who feel that the site is diluted.
Until sites stop trying to be most or all things to most or all people this will continue to be a problem for them.
The coin has two sides (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Have they? With that moronic "Share" button where the useful "read more" link once was, I think we can be sure that they're just trying to bring back the horror show that was Beta one change at a time.
Dice hates its userbase just as much as Reddit's management did. This is what happens when you let sociopathic MBAs run a site. These evil beings think only terms of monetizing, so they can lubricate their way into fat payoffs and leave the sites they've screwed as smoking ruins.
Re: (Score:3)
No company "hates" its userbase.
The userbase is rather considered as some sort of nebulous thing which can be shaped however the company sees fit. Sometimes that boulder is soft and can be shaped however the company wants, either because it has huge inertia, (see Facebook) or because it's mesmerized by the company (see CIG), but sometimes it's so hard that the company breaks its teeth on it.
Re: (Score:3)
Dice hates its userbase
This is the real problem, in both reddit's and /.'s case. These 'business-people' have no idea of how a community works, what free-speech actually is and they cannot understand any behavior that is not selfish. The very fact that people are ready to volunteer time and effort into a community they love is confusing to them. They think that people like this are idiots. They hate them. They just want to monetize the phenomenon as much as they can and get out of this crap.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
We're talking about someone who doesn't even know how to use her own product (she once posted a submission that linked to one of her private PMs) and can't even apologize on her own site before going to the media to try to put out fires. She's apparently got dodgy ideas about race and sexism (her failed lawsuit against KP, banning certain subreddits). So an influential black leader gets pissy over a PR stunt that went bad and demands some action? Sure, I could see Pao reacting by firing the most high-profile and well-liked employee at the company without having a contingency plan in place.
-B
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:4)
Whatever happened to keeping the customer happy? Reddit is a social media site, the users are the customers, and they are not happy. The entire premise of reddit is bring in the users to generate ad revenue. Along comes Pao who and pisses off a massive segment of the userbase. I doesn't matter if you like them or agree with them, if that is your audience your job is to keep them happy.
Pao's problem isn't that she made a mistake. The problem is she doesn't know how to use the site (for real she doesn't) and doesn't get the concept of user generated content. I mean reddit bills itself as the front page of the internet, so where do you go to get the news about her apology? Time. She apologized on national media before doing it on the very site she is supposed to be promoting, that's just clueless.
She is a terrible CEO and if reddits board had any brains they would fire her immediately.
Re:Sad (Score:4)
She is a terrible CEO and if reddits board had any brains they would fire her immediately.
Yeah, but could they afford the lawsuit? The smartest move would have been to never hire her in the first place. It seems clear that she's trying to drive it into the ground.
Re: (Score:3)
Keep in mind that ads aren't reddit's only source of revenue. They also have reddit gold, which is a pretty bizarre thing: It functions basically as a subscription to the site with some of the typical perks.
The strange thing is that in general people don't buy it for themselves, they buy it for other people in recognition of good comments. Basically, if UserX makes a comment I really like I might click on the "give gold" button at the bottom of the comment. I pay money to reddit, reddit gives UserX some per
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Short answer, no.
Longer answer, MS Taylor was fired and no one providing an explanation about why. In one rumor, MS Taylor indicated she doesn't know. Another rumor, maybe because she refused to leave New York. By all accounts, MS Taylor had a high profile position and was well liked by the volunteer moderators. Key word is "volunteers". Whatever you may think of a companies rights to do whatever they like with their employees, a company that relies volunteers to help their bottom line gives those individua
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, irony.
-B
Re:reddit (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh, who cares. Does anybody actually still look at that web site? Honestly I barely knew it was still around.
Funny, that is what people are usually saying about this website. Hell, a while back slashdot's own Rob Malda made CNN's list of 10 people who don't matter [cnn.com].
Re:reddit (Score:5, Insightful)
Stopped reading when I saw Linus Tovalds on that list.
You should have continued, because it gets better:
Mark Zuckerberg
[...] Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion. Bad move. After selling itself to Rupert Murdoch's Fox for $580 million last year, MySpace is now the Web's second most popular website. Facebook is growing too - but given that MySpace has quickly grown into the industry's 80-million-user gorilla, it's hard to imagine who would pay billions for an also-ran.
There's also that gem:
Reed Hastings
CEO, Netflix
[...] It's simply not clear that anything Hastings has built will give him much of a leg up as the industry shifts toward video-on-demand and other forms of digital distribution. Hastings has created an amazing system for shuffling around 120mm plastic discs, but online rivals such as iTunes and MovieLink seem to have the momentum as we head into the future.
What is MovieLink? "On December 16, 2008 the Movielink website was shut down." Oops!
Also mentions the PS3 failure...
Re:We screwed up? (Score:4, Funny)
How about I screwed up? Or does the buck not stop at the top at reddit?
We screwed up and some of us will be fired.
Re: We screwed up? (Score:3)
You say that like it's an unusual trait in a politician.