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Reddit CEO Pao steps down

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Z

Zaph

Member
chaobreaker said:
Yishan Wong (/u/Yishan), the CEO of reddit that preceded Ellen Wong, was throwing shade at admin and reddit board member Alexis Ohanian a couple of hours ago. Particularly on him letting Pao take the fall for the firing of Victoria when that was all on him. Alexis even pops up to reply to his comments.

Ex-employees are publicly discussing the circumstances of other former employees' termination. No respect for NDA at all. Just airing the dirty laundry of reddit going down for all the see.

It's like watching the world's slowest trainwreck.
Click to expand...

Reddit's entire administration hierarchy is a mess which seems to attract and incubate shady individuals (Pao included). The speculation behind Yishan's resignation, and the convenient timing of the position for Pao, as well as all the incredible unprofessional comments left by Alexis and Yishan, make me wonder how Reddit survived this long.

I know people like to demonise Reddit due to some of the more notorious subs and controversies, but there is a massive amount of amazing communities housed at Reddit that honestly deserve better.
 
K

kirblar

Member
lol WOW he's going in -https://np.reddit.com/user/yishan

"What's the best long con you've ever pulled?"

Here's one.

In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.

Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, he would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.

Once this was done, he and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.

JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.
Click to expand...
 
S

Silver Arrows

Banned
Let it burn, Reddit. Show off why you're becoming an irrelevant site that nobody wants to work for.

Seriously, this is bush league stuff. How do any of the investors or board members not step in and stamp out this stuff? This is public civil war, and is making Reddit even more undesirable to advertisers, something they desperately need.
 
Z

Zaph

Member
M

MrBadger

Member
So the ex-CEO came back and put the blame on Kn0thing?

latest


Then again, this was somewhat known that it was his decision to fire Victoria since he said as much in Pao's resignation thread. Interesting that he'd only say that after she resigned
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
OpinionatedCyborg said:
I'm not going to argue with your first point or last points because I agree with them.

Pinterest is analogous to the reddit of 4 - 5 years ago, but not so much today. If I had to guess, I would bet that 5 years ago reddit had a 90:10 male:female ratio whereas now it's closer to 60:40. Pinterest is still overwhelmingly female.

You mean subreddits. A subreddit is a forum. A thread is a discussion within a forum. Pao and Wong removed subreddits, not threads (although I hear Pao did censor threads about her husband's ongoing criminal case).
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Thread, subreddit. I don't browse Reddit nearly enough to give a fuck at the difference and definitely not enough to edit my post to reflect that difference.

Bottom line, the treatment of Pao vs Wong when they did many of the same things is telling as fuck. This difference in treatment can be found even here on GAF.

I only read two subreddits/threads/groups/conversations. Outside of GAF (and even then I'm posting less and less each day) I find 95% of web communities to ultimately be the same. A racist/sexist/homophobic cesspool in the end because something something free speech or whatever shit people cry about.
 
D

dLMN8R

Member
I don't get why anyone is still even questioning whether Alexis was responsible for Victoria getting fired.

He confirmed it himself:

dLMN8R said:
https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/619630581031260160

CJleuvgWUAAv9JO.jpg:large


"It was my decision to change how we work with AMAs"
Click to expand...


Soyongdori said:
I've heard Pao was responsible for firing Victoria who was in charge of celebrity AMA after that last trainwreck of AMA. Hence the people against her in Reddit grew in quadruple.
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Nope. Again, she is not responsible for firing Victoria.
 
S

sangreal

Member
dLMN8R said:
I don't get why anyone is still even questioning whether Alexis was responsible for Victoria getting fired.

He confirmed it himself:






Nope. Again, she is not responsible for firing Victoria.
Click to expand...

He also said he was reporting to her with regards to that decision. Buck stops with her

Regardless, allowing one admin to be let go is hardly the issue with Ellen Pao's tenure. It was the handling of it that broke the camel's back and she was already a very controversial figure before that. She expended way too much capital that she never earned with the community
 
C

chaobreaker

Member
sangreal said:
He also said he was reporting to her with regards to that decision. Buck stops with her

Regardless, allowing one admin to be let go is hardly the issue with Ellen Pao's tenure. It was the handling of it that broke the camel's back and she was already a very controversial figure before that. She expended way too much capital that she never earned with the community
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She couldn't refuse to fire Victoria even if she wanted to, though.

And while she was a controversial individual to begin with, any appointed CEO hand picked by the reddit executives, the people truly responsible for the shitshow that is going on right now, will not be any better.
 
C

crazygambit

Member
Stumpokapow said:
The OP suggests that the board wanted to make money more aggressively and she stepped down because she disagreed. The main criticism against Pao is that she is making decisions that are bad for the community in order to make the site more money. Unless you think the explanation is a lie, isn't this "bad" even if you don't like her, because her board-appointed replacement would be even more aggressive with trying to make money?
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They didn't talk about monetization strategies though, just user growth.
 
M

Maxim726X

Member
I keep reading about Reddit's impending doom... But where is the alternative?

When Digg was melting down, Reddit was there to pick up the pieces. What's going to take its place?
 
B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
Maxim726X said:
I keep reading about Reddit's impending doom... But where is the alternative?

When Digg was melting down, Reddit was there to pick up the pieces. What's going to take its place?
Click to expand...

4chan is and will always be, there's that option if you wish. The only difference between reddit is that everyone on 4chan doesn't hide that they can be a piece of shit.
 
G

Guevara

Member
Maxim726X said:
I keep reading about Reddit's impending doom... But where is the alternative?

When Digg was melting down, Reddit was there to pick up the pieces. What's going to take its place?
Click to expand...

The alternative is to just browse Imgur directly. It's got to be 50%+ of reddit's content these days anyway.
 
G

GrizzleBoy

Banned
0xCA2 said:
So apparently that dude wasn't actually fired for being sick either eh
Click to expand...

The headline:

"Reddit fires employee for being Sick! After almost two years of not actually being fit for work! And paid for a year of his healthcare when they let him go!"


Never did make a whole load of sense for the amount of outrage it got.
 
Baki

Baki

Member
Zaptruder said:
So Alexis Ohanian is the cancerous underbelly of Reddit admins huh.

Unfortunately, we're unlikely to see the kind of lynch mob that we need to get him booted like with Ellen.
Click to expand...

He's one of the founders and much more competent than Pao could ever dream of being.
 
A

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Well, honestly, everyone is forgetting WHY the Pao hate started - When she censored the site regarding her own legal issues.

Reddit is built on a no-intervention policy, and absolutely, really, really, really hates censorship.

The current issue (Firing of Victoria, and honestly - it's not that she was fired, it's the fallout of the no communication strategy between admins and mods of giant subreddits, including AMA), for which the CEO is definitely responsible, firing of the current handler of AMAs or not.
 
R

RockTurtle

Member
Veritigo_X said:
I just browse this website called NeoGAF these days. You should check it out.
Click to expand...

neogaf doesn't have a subforum for discussing the intricacies of thick asians

so reddit is my only choice.

Aureon said:
Well, honestly, everyone is forgetting WHY the Pao hate started - When she censored the site regarding her own legal issues.

Reddit is built on a no-intervention policy, and absolutely, really, really, really hates censorship.

The current issue (Firing of Victoria, and honestly - it's not that she was fired, it's the fallout of the no communication strategy between admins and mods of giant subreddits, including AMA), for which the CEO is definitely responsible, firing of the current handler of AMAs or not.
Click to expand...

nah bro all her shady ordeals are already forgiven and swept under the rug due to recently new info.
 
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