r/OutOfTheLoop • u/OOTLMods • Jul 10 '15
Megathread Ellen Pao, reddit's interim CEO, has resigned. Post all you questions in this thread.
A few minutes ago it was announced that Ellen Pao has resigned from her position as CEO of reddit. Steve Huffman will be the next reddit CEO.
Some links of interest
Our wiki entry on Ellen Pao and the controversy surrounding her.
2005 Reddit Interview. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian talk about building reddit.
Please keep the discussion civil.
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u/sacara Jul 10 '15
Who is u/spez and why is everyone happy that he's back?
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u/OOTLMods Jul 10 '15
He's one of the co-founders of reddit, along with Alexis, u/Kn0thing
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Jul 10 '15
I've never really paid attention to the history of reddit and am a relatively late-adopter. It seems like from the comments, Steve Huffman is having a welcome return.
Was there anything significant about Steve Huffman's previous tenure, other than the founding of it, that has made redditors happy for his return and is there anything we should know about his previous departure?
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u/Werner__Herzog Jul 10 '15 edited Jul 11 '15
Well for starters he wrote the first version of reddit. But him and Alexis were really involved with the community in its early days. Both then moved away from reddit and did other stuff. They both founded some other startups. They founded Hipmunk together and Ohanian also founded Breadpig. And now both are back.
The third person involved in the founding days of reddit is Aaron Swartz, quite the controversial figure in the reddit offices, but probably the most beloved among a lot of people on reddit.
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u/Letmefixthatforyouyo Jul 10 '15 edited Jul 10 '15
It should be noted that Aaron invented the rss (real simple syndicate) protocol at 14, and was a stalwart supporter of open information. His last project was a digital deaddrop that whistle blowers can use to communicate with journalists anonymously.
When facing 35 years of jail time for downloading science journals at MIT with an intent to redistribute the data, he killed himself at age 26.
Im one of those certain people of reddit.
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u/yumz Jul 11 '15
It should be noted that Aaron Swartz most certainly DID NOT invent RSS. He was, however, involved in the working group that developed the RSS spec.
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u/datchilla Jul 11 '15
That was really rough when it happened. It's just so terrible and the things that were said to be happening between the authorities and Swartz were just weird, you'd think that stuff stopped in the 90s but no.
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u/beamdriver Jul 10 '15
As has been pointed out ad nauseum, he was in no way facing 35 years in prison. He was offered a plea deal of three months and it's unlikely, given Federal sentencing guidelines, that he would have been sentenced to more than a couple of years if he went to trial and was convicted.
Also, he was accused of more than just downloading science journals. He caused quite a bit of trouble for the MIT computer staff and his shenanigans have changed the way that people on MIT networks may access JSTOR.
Finally, sad as his death was, there's no evidence that his suicide was related to his prosecution. Swartz was a troubled young man who suffered from depression. He left no note or other indication of why he ended his life.
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u/explainittomeplease Jul 11 '15
a digital deaddrop that whistle blowers can use to communicate with journalists anonymously.
Can you ELI5 this for me? I'm pretty sure I get it, but I'm also pretty computer retarded so I might not understand it at all.
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u/Bardfinn Jul 10 '15
It should be noted that Aaron's involvement with reddit was limited to porting code, and that his documented personal politics are highly progressive, feminist, and much of the "Freeze Peach" advocates of Reddit would spit on him and call him an SJW if they knew him, instead of his post-mortem legend.
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Jul 11 '15
Yup, Aaron actually posted here before in response to u/spez, Steven Huffman. I don't think they liked eachother and from what steve said it sounded like aaron was just lazy.
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u/random12356622 Jul 11 '15
The decision to require staff to relocate to SF or seek employment elsewhere hurt the depth of knowledge the staff had in reddit. They might be excellent engineers, managers, and other talents, but they don't understand reddit's culture, mechanics, or history.
Steve Huffman created reddit, his biggest challenge will be to bridge the reddit knowledge gap between him, his team, and redditors. Running reddit isn't a website, but a community, and hopefully he will be able to translate that to his team.
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Jul 11 '15
Steve Huffman created reddit,
That doesn't mean anything as u/kn0thing happily proved in the past.
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u/InvisibleOcelot Jul 11 '15
How exactly did he prove that?
I'm only aware of the "tasty popcorn"-comment but I've only been on reedit for 1.5 years....
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u/random12356622 Jul 11 '15
u/kn0thing backed Ellen in many controversial decisions.
One of which Ellen and the admin team banned subreddits with out first consulting the mod team. They forgot subreddits are communities filled with redditors which are people.
If I were to put the previous admins mistakes it would be they forgot to remember the human.
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Jul 10 '15
Which one of you guys fucked up the title?
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u/Werner__Herzog Jul 11 '15
Duh, u/OOTLMods of course.
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u/luckjes112 Aug 23 '15
Ocarina of Time Light Mods?
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u/Werner__Herzog Aug 23 '15
I'm talking about the OP of this post. OOTLMods = r/OutOfTheLoop-Mods = the shared account of all moderators of this subreddit.
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u/meofherethere Jul 11 '15 edited Jul 11 '15
wait, you're still around, I thought you quit ages back?
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u/Thrice395 Jul 10 '15
Will there be any significant changes the average user will notice?
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u/avec_serif Jul 11 '15
Pao was only interim CEO, so why didn't Reddit just hire Huffman and naturally end her interim? Why did she have to actually resign?
I don't get why it was necessary. Her position was temporary, so wouldn't it just end whenever a permanent CEO was hired?
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Jul 11 '15
I don't know much about this, but it can be that reddit's board of directors didn't want Pao to leave, but she suffered so much hate during the last couple of weeks that she decided to resign and the board had to accept her decision.
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u/avec_serif Jul 11 '15
This seems possible, though IIRC the board said she resigned by "mutual agreement."
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u/nephros Jul 16 '15
Yeah well, that might just be the official/legal version. As in, didn't quit, didn't get fired.
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Jul 11 '15
The reddit employee who did an AMA (I think he was fired for having cancer or something?) did mention that Pao had said the position would have to be "pried out of her cold, dead hands." Maybe she wasn't the interim anymore?
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u/Jesus_Faction Jul 11 '15
she still had a few months left on the interim period before the board had to decide to keep her or get someone else
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u/mrg014 Jul 11 '15
Is there still a boycott Tommorow? This will change my plans drastically from browsing reddit in shame or browsing reddit like I usually do, in shame.
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u/AtlasRodeo Jul 11 '15
Young Americans only get fuckin active at the stupidest shit. HOW ABOUT YOU FUCKING VOTE NEXT ELECTION FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE nobody cares if you're playin TF2 instead of redditing for one damn afternoon.
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u/whizzer0 Jul 11 '15
Don't know about the others but I read this sarcastically and it drastically improved my redditing experience.
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u/Random_Link_Roulette Jul 11 '15
nobody cares if you're playin TF2 instead of redditing for one damn afternoon.
And we dont give a shit if you're voting or not.
Who gives a fuck?
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u/Levy_Wilson Jul 11 '15
HOW ABOUT YOU FUCKING VOTE NEXT ELECTION FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE
Because voting doesn't work.
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u/xRyuuzetsu Jul 10 '15
Why did Steve Huffman stop being CEO in the first place if he was the founder of Reddit?
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Jul 11 '15
Why dies askreddits megathread say ellen degeneres?
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u/bublz Jul 11 '15
It was just a dumb joke. Which I thought was very dumb. I still don't really get it, but the OP there did it because both names are Ellen.
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u/repeat- Jul 11 '15
So people can ask, "Why does the title say Ellen Degeneres?" Because, ya know, AskReddit
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u/teknrd Jul 10 '15
Am I the only one that doesn't feel directly impacted by this? I can't seem to get a feeling from the community yet.
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u/SkorpioSound Jul 11 '15
It seems a lot like Steve wants to bring change to the site, he said a few years ago that he thought the site was getting stale, and that its support for mobile was abysmal, so I assume we'll see changes on those fronts at some point. He also responded to a question yesterday saying that he want to make improving mod tools a priority, so while regular users won't directly see that I'm sure it'll have some indirect effect on us.
On the whole though, I don't think we'll see any changes for a while - it's not like there's going to be a complete overhaul of the site tomorrow now that there's a new CEO. I'm sure we'll certainly experience change down the line, although it'll take time to code and to address, and we may or may not notice it or attribute it to Steve, depending on how gradual it is.
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u/ZachPhrost Jul 11 '15
Nope. The majority of Reddit users don't care. I don't care. You probably don't either.
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u/looks_at_lines Jul 11 '15
I know Ellen Pao is partly responsible for some of this drama, but there's a huge element missing. Who sits on the board of Reddit, and what exactly are their growth goals?
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u/FlyMyPretty Jul 11 '15
I think that they would like it if, at some point, it looked like reddit might make a profit.
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u/abeiks Jul 10 '15
Why does everyone care so much? What did she ( I mean her in particular) do that was so bad?
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u/ClintHammer Jul 10 '15
It was rumored (mind you rumored) that the reason Victoria was fired was she wasn't interested in "pay to win" tweaks to r/iama for celebs
Also she was against subs that may have been illegal in some states because of "cyberbullying" but that was in the past
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u/repeat- Jul 11 '15
Can you define "pay to win"? I don't understand what that meant
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u/deafblindmute Jul 11 '15
To correct u/ClintHammer's statement for u/abeiks, people hated her very openly and specifically for banning five subs that were involved with online harassment and breaking the rules of the site. The argument was that these subs being banned was an attack on freedom of speech. It is not in the past. It is the very contemporary reason for people hating her.
The Victoria stuff is certainly the cause of the most recent uproar, but that is really just continuation of a longstanding feud.
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Jul 11 '15
In addition to what the others said, she sued her previous employer for unfair termination, when it was obvious the termination was entirely fair. Her husband is also a huge dickbag.
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u/fuck_the_haters_ Jul 10 '15
Why exactly was there a backlash against her being CEO, I know that she was a huge dick by filing that lawsuit about gender discrimination when she didn't get a raise, but what did she do as a CEO of Reddit that made no one like her?
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u/FearMonstro Jul 11 '15
I'm not convinced that filing a lawsuit about gender discrimination makes her a "huge dick". What if she had won the case? Would we still consider her all-evil, even if the court jurisdiction agreed with her case? And, her losing the case doesn't prove that she had malicious intent. Maybe not everyone agrees whether gender discrimination happens in the form that she suggested, but it's not outrageous to think it's possible. I'm so confused because I just don't see the evidence. What am I missing?
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u/Neckbeard_The_Great Jul 11 '15
Things that came out in the case were pretty damning. She sabotaged other women's careers, she claimed to support a coworker then turned around and called that coworker's advancement discrimination against her, and when she lost the suit, she demanded that KP pay her something like two million dollars to keep her from appealing.
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u/Seifuu Jul 11 '15
They strawmanned her case to be representative of hypermisandry because their primary exposure to gender disparity is via hyperbolic tumblr posts.
It's just like every other mass internet/social complaint: Straight White Thin Males get criticized by minorities who champion things using incorrect evidence (because they don't understand the issue fully), so the Straight White Thin Males think there's no validity to the criticism and dismiss anything that uses similar reasoning (because they don't understand the issue fully)
This results in: "Tumblr blames men for wage disparity, but there is evidence against disparity in actual wages paid" (despite the fact that there is a difference in money earned/sex because fields dominated by masculine gender roles pay more). "Therefore, women like to blame men for made-up problems."
Thus, when Ellen Pao loses her lawsuit, it autocorrects to "another woman blaming a man for a made-up problem". Regardless of the actual circumstances or evidence in the case.
In the end, it's the same answer as everything: people default to explanations that lay blame/responsibility on another party (God, women, men, fat people, atheists, theists, etc) based on plausibility rather than evidence.
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u/fuck_the_haters_ Jul 13 '15
I am more inclined to believe the court. So if she did win I would assume that she was discriminated against and was rightfully compensated, but since she didn't I consider her a dick for wasting court time, and making genuine discrimination cases harder to believe. Keep in mind im just a regular dude with 0 knowledge when it comes to law.
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u/Nacksche Jul 13 '15
I'm not convinced that filing a lawsuit about gender discrimination makes her a "huge dick".
And, her losing the case doesn't prove that she had malicious intent
Of course it doesn't, how would anybody here have a damn clue how she was treated there or how legit her lawsuit was. Losing it doesn't mean she made everything up for profit.
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Jul 10 '15
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u/gggggrrrrrrrrr Jul 11 '15
But was she really responsible for the changes? In most businesses, it seems like the CEO is mostly a figurehead who carries out the board's ideas. And all of her detractors just resorted to racism and sexism, so it was hard for me to take them seriously. Sure she made some shitty personal choices, but I don't think all the hate was justified.
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u/SamSlate Jul 11 '15
is there any reason to believe the claims that she was hired only to make "unpopular decisions" and was "always meant to be fired" (presumably on behalf of some dark shadow console of immortal satanic reddit admin/lizard people).
I have found nothing that supports this claim, and yet it is a top post on nearly every thread discussing this piece of news.
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u/Nacksche Jul 13 '15
Thanks for the link. Follow up question, do you know what this is about?
The idea of laying an ad platform over the top of a user generated content site with volunteer moderaters was never going to fly.
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Jul 10 '15
Would you argue that the 'revolt' or the recent events had anything to do with her stepping down?
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u/Werner__Herzog Jul 10 '15 edited Jul 10 '15
The official reason is that "the board asked [her] to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than [she] believed [she] can deliver while maintaining reddit’s core principles". But there's probably nobody who thinks that's the only reason.
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u/splattypus Jul 10 '15
I mean, they can see the traffic stats. If there was negative growth since this ordeal began, she wouldn't be wrong in her statement...
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u/TwistTurtle Jul 11 '15
What the hell does any of this have to do with Ellen DeGeneres?!
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u/Werner__Herzog Jul 11 '15
If this is a serious question, nothing. They just share the same first name.
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u/FlyMyPretty Jul 11 '15
Predictive text, perhaps? Although I just tried it and my phone suggests Ellen { page and the boys are coming}, not Degeneres.
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u/pickituputitdown Jul 11 '15
Will fatpeoplehate make a return now? (has it already?)
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u/fckingmiracles Jul 11 '15 edited Jul 11 '15
No. u/spez will keep up the new board-approved anti-harassment policy.
This was not Pao's singular idea, you know?
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u/AtlasRodeo Jul 11 '15
I fucking hope not.
I don't give a shit about reddit having free speech of hate speech is included. I want a non hate speech website. I don't care if it's reddit or another site.
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u/Tankman987 Jul 10 '15
What did Steve Huffman do as his time as a CEO of Reddit? And will this result in reddit to reverse the policies under Pao?
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u/Werner__Herzog Jul 10 '15
Steve’s great challenge as CEO [2] will be continuing the work Ellen started to drive this forward.
Doesn't look like it. I doubt she was the only person to decide about those policies. Also seeing as other social media websites followed the model of reddit of banning revenge porn for example (I believe Twitter did so), there's no way they'll back up from it. Of course I can't be 100% sure.
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u/CrowbarEnema Jul 11 '15
How long do we have to wait to start blaming the "new" guy for stuff? /s
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u/Dragovic Jul 11 '15
He co-founded reddit so every single problem can be traced back to him. There never was a time we couldn't blame him for stuff.
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u/SebasTheBass Jul 10 '15
Hopefully this will bring the end of Ellen Pao shitposts to the front page.