I understand your position and you may even be right in the specific case you mentioned. That said, however, I think the larger picture as a whole points blame at more than just the mods, and primarily at the CEO/management.
Mods are volunteer labor. Some are good, some are not. Positions of authority attract those who want authority. This can be a bad thing and can enlist tyrannical people into positions with too much power. I think it is fair to say that some of the mods on Reddit fit this description but I think it is equally fair to say that their CEO does too. Ellen Pao is ignoring the complaints of the Reddit community entirely. She is pretending that nothing is happening, and won't even make a blog post or text post to her own website to address the concerns of the community. This is unprofessional and unfortunate.
It is obvious that the company has been in flux since Ellen Pao took over and the results are seemingly disastrous. If I was a stakeholder in Reddit, I would demand her resignation, regardless of the mods and their actions. Obviously she has no idea what the community wants and how to competently communicate with them. She has shown how inept she is at dealing with sensitive issues multiple times- I think it is clear that her leadership is not what Reddit needs if it wants to survive.
I agree, Ellen Pao doesn't really care what the community wants. She cares what the community will buy. She's not a nanny, there to comfort the users and hand us lollipops. She's there to run a business and make it profitable. In the process she's identifying what she thinks are problems with the existing model and making changes. Reddit's model was dysfunctional long before she was put in charge. Now she's making changes and people who liked the old model are throwing tantrums.
Now, does that mean I think she isn't making mistakes? No, it does not. I don't know enough about everything she's done or how she's doing them to make that kind of judgment. I do know that one of the earlier actions she took -- getting rid of /r/fatpeoplehate that started the prior "exodus" -- was one of the better decisions she could have made. I don't know what's going on with Victoria and I don't know that many people know the whole story either. Mostly people know what impact it made on a specific community and there was already significant hostility against her because she's painted as a "social justice warrior."
She could probably handle this better, but again her focus is not on the users. Her focus is on the revenue being created by advertising and keeping that advertising money coming. Cleaning up the site to make it more appealing to advertisers is probably more important to her right now than the complaints of what I guarantee is a minority of users who ultimately won't have the power to make much of an impact on reddit's revenue stream.
She is a CEO of a company, not a mod of an internet community. She has financial goals that directly correlate with her professional success as CEO and she has to be accountable to those goals. I think the only point where I differ in opinion is on the blame of AMAgeddon. There is surely enough blame to go around but the situation was not handled well by Reddit (the company) as a whole and communication was horrific. I think the real criticism I have for Ellen Pao is her lack of communication with the Reddit community/Reddit Mods, not the direction she has taken the company in hopes to monetize the site. That being said, it is hard to blame her for her silence when you see the personal attacks and hatred that the Reddit community has relentlessly spewed at her.
What are your thoughts on the idea that Ellen Pao is specifically being kept around to basically be the face of all the unpopular changes reddit pushes through? While the other admin involved, Alexis Ohanian, is certainly being downvoted, there's almost not vitriolic posts about him or petitions demanding his resignation - yet a lot of the truly dire issues with reddit started when he returned approximately nine months ago.
Essentially, what if Ellen Pao is being used as a corporate red herring?
Essentially, what if Ellen Pao is being used as a corporate red herring?
That is a definite possibility but frankly, there is no way for us to know. This is the point of having a CEO, they get to be the punching bag when things go poorly and they get championed when their company looks good. If Ohanian is directly responsible for anything, it still has to fly through Pao and ultimately, she is responsible. Still, to me, it doesn't really matter WHO it is, just that the decision makers are making bad decisions and those decision makers work for Reddit, the company. I don't have anything personal against Ellen Pao or Alexis Ohanian, I just want Reddit to be happy, non-toxic, interesting, and successful- I don't think it can be with the current trajectory.
That comment does make a good point about shadowbanning. And I'm sure it's hard to get a hold of the admins when something like that happens and you want some answers. It would suck to be one of the paying customers on Reddit and get treated like that.
I don't think that's scary, just the way it is for him. Maybe he would care more if had more option to be involved in the community (instead of the emotionally distant place that was/is Reddit).
In the end this is a nice thing for them the community gets toxic like Reddit was. The toxicity both keeps you from becoming attached to the community as well as pushes people away. If people go, there is less content (especially if it was someone like /u/sooperdavid from /r/reallifedoodles who is a major content creator) and without content there is no reason to stay in this place you have no attachment to.
I like to think of this as the ultimate check and balance for sites like this.
I understand your position and you may even be right in the specific case you mentioned. That said, however, I think the larger picture as a whole points blame at more than just the mods, and primarily at the CEO/management.
Mods are volunteer labor. Some are good, some are not. Positions of authority attract those who want authority. This can be a bad thing and can enlist tyrannical people into positions with too much power. I think it is fair to say that some of the mods on Reddit fit this description but I think it is equally fair to say that their CEO does too. Ellen Pao is ignoring the complaints of the Reddit community entirely. She is pretending that nothing is happening, and won't even make a blog post or text post to her own website to address the concerns of the community. This is unprofessional and unfortunate.
It is obvious that the company has been in flux since Ellen Pao took over and the results are seemingly disastrous. If I was a stakeholder in Reddit, I would demand her resignation, regardless of the mods and their actions. Obviously she has no idea what the community wants and how to competently communicate with them. She has shown how inept she is at dealing with sensitive issues multiple times- I think it is clear that her leadership is not what Reddit needs if it wants to survive.
EDIT TotallyTrusty pointed out that Ellen Pao has just addressed the Reddit Community, I withdrawal my criticism on this issue.
I agree, Ellen Pao doesn't really care what the community wants. She cares what the community will buy. She's not a nanny, there to comfort the users and hand us lollipops. She's there to run a business and make it profitable. In the process she's identifying what she thinks are problems with the existing model and making changes. Reddit's model was dysfunctional long before she was put in charge. Now she's making changes and people who liked the old model are throwing tantrums.
Now, does that mean I think she isn't making mistakes? No, it does not. I don't know enough about everything she's done or how she's doing them to make that kind of judgment. I do know that one of the earlier actions she took -- getting rid of /r/fatpeoplehate that started the prior "exodus" -- was one of the better decisions she could have made. I don't know what's going on with Victoria and I don't know that many people know the whole story either. Mostly people know what impact it made on a specific community and there was already significant hostility against her because she's painted as a "social justice warrior."
She could probably handle this better, but again her focus is not on the users. Her focus is on the revenue being created by advertising and keeping that advertising money coming. Cleaning up the site to make it more appealing to advertisers is probably more important to her right now than the complaints of what I guarantee is a minority of users who ultimately won't have the power to make much of an impact on reddit's revenue stream.
I think we agree, on the whole.
She is a CEO of a company, not a mod of an internet community. She has financial goals that directly correlate with her professional success as CEO and she has to be accountable to those goals. I think the only point where I differ in opinion is on the blame of AMAgeddon. There is surely enough blame to go around but the situation was not handled well by Reddit (the company) as a whole and communication was horrific. I think the real criticism I have for Ellen Pao is her lack of communication with the Reddit community/Reddit Mods, not the direction she has taken the company in hopes to monetize the site. That being said, it is hard to blame her for her silence when you see the personal attacks and hatred that the Reddit community has relentlessly spewed at her.
What are your thoughts on the idea that Ellen Pao is specifically being kept around to basically be the face of all the unpopular changes reddit pushes through? While the other admin involved, Alexis Ohanian, is certainly being downvoted, there's almost not vitriolic posts about him or petitions demanding his resignation - yet a lot of the truly dire issues with reddit started when he returned approximately nine months ago.
Essentially, what if Ellen Pao is being used as a corporate red herring?
That is a definite possibility but frankly, there is no way for us to know. This is the point of having a CEO, they get to be the punching bag when things go poorly and they get championed when their company looks good. If Ohanian is directly responsible for anything, it still has to fly through Pao and ultimately, she is responsible. Still, to me, it doesn't really matter WHO it is, just that the decision makers are making bad decisions and those decision makers work for Reddit, the company. I don't have anything personal against Ellen Pao or Alexis Ohanian, I just want Reddit to be happy, non-toxic, interesting, and successful- I don't think it can be with the current trajectory.
She did finally write a post on r/annoucements today. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out.
I feel like it was to little too late.
I think this comment on her post covered it fairly well.
That comment does make a good point about shadowbanning. And I'm sure it's hard to get a hold of the admins when something like that happens and you want some answers. It would suck to be one of the paying customers on Reddit and get treated like that.
I found this comment very interesting.
That is scarily true. People tend to care about the content, not the site.
I don't think that's scary, just the way it is for him. Maybe he would care more if had more option to be involved in the community (instead of the emotionally distant place that was/is Reddit).
In the end this is a nice thing for them the community gets toxic like Reddit was. The toxicity both keeps you from becoming attached to the community as well as pushes people away. If people go, there is less content (especially if it was someone like /u/sooperdavid from /r/reallifedoodles who is a major content creator) and without content there is no reason to stay in this place you have no attachment to.
I like to think of this as the ultimate check and balance for sites like this.