Yesterday KQED Forum had a segment on the whole Reddit saga(*). I have recently become a Reddit user (more like a Reddit lurker really) and have seen it all unfold over the last couple of months, with lots of feelings and opinions on the subject. I found myself driving down 101 nodding and shaking my head in turns. Gesticulating sometimes. Occasionally I had to turn off the radio to collect my thoughts and clear my head. I couldn't get the topic out of my head all day, so I just had to jot down my thoughts...
If you are wondering "what Reddit saga?" here's a brief recap. Otherwise feel free to skip below.
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The Reddit Saga
Ellen Pao used to work at Kleiner Perkins. She later sued them claiming she had been discriminated against because of her gender. After that she joined Reddit and became interim CEO when the old CEO resigned. During her tenure Reddit banned five communities (sub-reddits) for bad behavior. This led to a massive backlash from the Reddit "community" who felt that this erstwhile bastion of free speech was being turned into a vanilla politically correct zone. It was rumored that these changes were being done to attract advertisers who wouldn't want to be associated with the more objectionable content on Reddit. (Keep in mind that /rapingwomen and /burningkids are both real community names on that site). There was also a strong suspicion that the feminazi CEO was bringing her political agenda to the website. A few weeks later, a well known Reddit employee was terminated. Her primary role involved interacting with some moderators of Reddit communities and these moderators were upset that they hadn't been warned of this change and their work was disrupted. Other users and moderators saw Victoria's firing as another sign of Reddit turning evil. A full scale revolt followed, several communities went off line. Although no details of the firing were available, the user community assumed that Ellen Pao was behind it. She was reviled on the various forums, a petition circulated calling for her resignation.
A couple of days later, she did resign. One of Reddit's founders returned as CEO. Information then started to dribble out that Ellen Pao was not responsible for Victoria's firing, it was the chairman of the board (another founder). Also there were claims that far from pushing for censorship on Reddit, Ms Pao had been fighting the board on this topic because she knew how much backlash censorship would cause.
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First, the issue at stake is not free speech (and I'm not just saying that because a private company has no responsibility to be a 1st amendment haven). The Reddit community is ostensibly up in arms about free speech but what they are really upset about is commercialization. They are not so worried about losing free speech, they are worried that free speech is being sacrificed for monetary gain. The problem Reddit faces is the same one that most sites face when they inevitably start talking monetization - user trust. This is the message Reddit needs to hear loud and clear : the users are concerned that the quality of their experience will suffer as Reddit starts to make money off of their content. And the users are losing trust in the Reddit management. For that reason a change of CEO was necessary. But not sufficient. The new CEO has made a good start by promising regular first hand conversations with the community. He has also been very upfront about the changes they are planning to make. This is essential. Everyone knows something will have to be done - Reddit needs to make money and you can't run ads on r/rapingwomen. I mean, other than ads for the next Cosby show. Many sites have succeeded at becoming popular but failed at monetizing that popularity. Whether Reddit will succeed depends on whether they can find the middle ground between pleasing their users and making money off their users. The majority of their users does not care about the majority of drama unfolding there, but the much vaunted vocal minority is harder to please. They are suspicious, paranoid people. Usually smart too. They need an open, sincere dialog. They need to be told The Plan. All of it. And they need to feel they can get behind that plan. Otherwise they will leave. And when they leave the others will follow.
Second - and I have to say this as a woman in Silicon Valley - the Ellen Pao lawsuit never for a second made me ponder sexism in the valley. But Ellen Pao's CEO stint at Reddit convinced me that sexism in tech is alive and well. The Reddit community skews young and male and tech savvy. The vocal part of the community especially so. And many of these users hated Ms Pao for daring (daring!) to bring a lawsuit about gender discrimination in the workplace. Because in their naive little sheltered minds the only discrimination that exists in the US today is reverse gender discrimination. So from the beginning she was reviled on the different forums. At every opportunity. A bitch. A cunt. Chairman Pao (lets toss in a little racism, why not). And the ultimate Reddit insult - an SJW (Social Justice Warrior). And every Reddit misstep, real or fancied, laid at her door. Of course that is going to happen to some extent with any CEO but it happened with unsettling ferocity to Ms Pao. Reddit is always quick to jump to conclusions but with Ellen it was more like trampolining to conclusions. Now some people point out that the latest round of controversy was over the firing of a female employee - proof that the outrage is completely free of gender connotations. That's not how sexism works though. The vitriol directed towards Ellen Pao is directed towards a woman leader, as well as a woman "troublemaker" (aka feminazi aka SJW aka someone who slept with her colleague and then sued her company).
And to be clear - this isn't any kind of defense of Ms Pao. I couldn't say whether her lawsuit had any merit; she got her day in court and lost. She is just human like us all and likely has plenty of flaws. But somehow I doubt she is the vicious she-demon that Reddit would make her out to be.
[As I wrote this I found myself talking about two "vocal minorities". One is the content creators, the trendsetters. The other is the loud anti-feminists. Are they the same? It is hard to tell. Someone could easily be in both categories unfortunately; there are plenty of very smart and thoughtful but naive tech men who think the feminazis are taking over the world. That's a topic for another day.]
