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.
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.