The Reddit Implosion

[Gravekeeper]

And as for the sexism thing, Seriously? I know how vile the MRAs can be coughgamergatecough, but they do a lot worse than call one unpleasant woman a bitch. By that same logic, anyone who calls someone a bastard is a man hater.

No, not how it works I'm afraid. You see bitch has had this long standing standing problem where its applied to any female in a position of power or otherwise that displays traits she would be praised for if she was a man.

In this case especially, Pao has been the target of rabid sexism from the moment she took the position. I don't even read or go near Reddit and I've seen some of the worst shit said about her since she took the job. Solely because she a vagina.

So yeah, you could have chosen your words better.

[Andara Bledin]

First off: Gods do I despise sites with auto-play videos, especially when those are ads. Seriously. Fuck them.

By the way, how could Pao have screwed over remote workers when that order came down in September and she wasn't made interim CEO until November?

But, hey, why let facts get in the way of a good hate-on.

[s_stabeler]

not to mention that some of the complaints are ridiculous ( the new search page? is different, not worse- many of the complaints come down to "but now it doesn't work the way it used to"- um, that is the point. it was an overhaul to make it easier to see what's relevant. If you really must, there is an option to use the old page. About the only real difference is they incorporated the subreddit search as well.)

[Gravekeeper]

Man, the other AMA mods are speaking up:

We received news of Ms. Taylor’s termination in a chaotic way: Someone who was scheduled to conduct an A.M.A. flew to New York to visit the Reddit office and discovered a canceled appointment and no backup support. Our team got a panicked message — and we had no real idea what was going on.

So someone of note flew to New York for an AMA only to walk in the door and discover it was cancelled and there was no back up plan or anything in place. It also seems she really was fired because she disagreed with Reddit's plans to commercialize the AMA's.

I don't know how much more idiotic of a business decision this could be at this point.

But I will say its unfortunate that Pao is the primary target of all this. I get the impression its the board of directors pushing a lot of this stuff but Pao is the public figurehead and thus is rage target for Redditers.

[s_stabeler]

I think it's more along the lines of not understanding the importance of AMAs- it's already been established that the board are out of touch with users, so they may have thought AMAs were a relatively unimportant part of Reddit- which would explain both why they never bothered to notify people, and why they didn't have a plan for how to handle the work in the interim.

That, and they may not have even realised how much work AMAs take- which is presumably quite a lot.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh, they definitely understand the importance of AMAs. That's why they're pushing to monetize them and to do things like video AMAs.

My guess is that she objected to turning AMAs into a profit center as opposed to them being a value ad on their basic ad support and that is most of why she was let go.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of confusion about who's doing what and when with this change, and they're dropping the ball really badly. Either that, or they chose to let it be a shit-show knowing that they'd be sacrificing Pao on the altar of public opinion later on and they just wanted to get things done in the short-term.

[Ginger Tea]

I'm rather indifferent to Pao, although she is vilified nigh on everywhere she is more or less a scapegoat and boogyman to all concerned.

As others have said, she is an interim CEO so she was never meant to be there long, though there is a quote of an employee (perhaps the leukaemia one) saying "they would have to prise the role out of her cold dead hands."

Boycott this boycott that till she goes, eg do not buy Reddit gold (never looked into what its use is for the receiver of a gilded comment out side of "Oh I got gilded thank you kind stranger." obligatory edits.)

In said boycott of the gold, users are posting that they pledge to buy $x of gold the day she leaves, assuming she has a set deadline (that we don't know about) and doesn't follow through with the cold dead hands quote, they are minted should these pledges be honoured.

But hey I don't understand or care to look into reddit gold outside of it helps pay for the servers, so me boycotting it is just like me boycotting BP when I don't have a car.

Regarding the woman fired (name starts with a V but I can't be arsed looking it up.) /u/chooter, it could be because of the nonsense of the "You must live in SF" policy, which as posted was started before Pao's taking of the helm.

It's a stupid policy and one that seems counter productive in the whole wired age, how many jobs can be done anywhere, so why 'force' people to relocate or loose jobs?

Was it the monetisation or future video AMA's?

Couldn't tell you, when I first heard of her firing I wondered what she did, then I found out some, perhaps quite a few, celebrities use her as a middle man sifting through the comments reading them out to the celeb and typing verbatum their replies.

So if Jesse Jackson wasn't replying directly it might explain some of the shit show I saw screen shots of.

So how many AMA's were ask my publicist anything's?

If celebs did their own AMA's there would be no need for her, or in a less demanding role, I mean, who flies to NY to do what could be done from the comfort of their own toilet wearing nothing but a dressing gown and bunny slippers?

It's not like going on a late night chat show where you physically have to be there.

Video AMA's could be a good thing, they stick a half hour video on youtube (either the AMA channel or their own official one) and read out questions from a tablet and reply, 3 days later the audience get their answers.

That or they risk YouTube's live stream service, but AMA's were always the wrong time zone for me, that I can see them having to travel to NY SF or where ever as not all celebs are tech savvy to have a live stream set up at home and I'm not sure if a Skype call could cut it. But hey if Skype works, then its almost back to dressing gowns and bunny slippers, works for TotalBiscuit.

Leukaemia guy, again time frames look like it predated Pao, but why let that get in the way of hate boners blaming her for everything?

OT but addressing other posts.

YouTube and the G+ integration, of those that would leave, how many made videos and didn't only have an account just to comment on videos or use the play list system?

I still don't have a YouTube account and probably never will unless I want to post content as I don't see a point in posting comments as the channels I go to have thousands and mine would be lost in the crowd or just some variation of an already posted comment.

Those that do post content need somewhere stable to go to, Blip isn't that great nor is vimeo and I don't know of any other services off the top of my head.

If there was more choice for content creators like there was for streaming porn sites then people could jump ship and take a massive hit in their viewer base, but as it stands it's better the devil you know. I haven't been there in an age, but it seems even TGWTG and channel awesome are cross posting to YouTube* and probably get better views and are more likely to be stumbled across in searches and sidebar recommendations, where as blip will just say "like that episode? want to watch the next video from the same guy in the queue?"

*their old YT presence started off as Welshy uploading 'pirate' content from blip, then it became a trailer site with the rare if old mirror upload, so I didn't pay it much heed at the time.

[s_stabeler]

Boycott this boycott that till she goes, eg do not buy Reddit gold (never looked into what its use is for the receiver of a gilded comment out side of "Oh I got gilded thank you kind stranger." obligatory edits.)

basically, Reddit Gold is your more-or-less standard premium account (access to gold-only subreddits, you can turn off the ads, you can use reddit themes, you can create a custom avatar, you can highlight new comments to a post, you get the ability to filter certain subreddits from r/all, you can subscribe to more subreddits ( a gold account has a max of 100, I don't know the maximum for free accounts. To be honest though, with multireddits, the feature is less useful.)

it helps that it isn't expensive- $30 per year.

As for gilding, it means that someone has paid for you to have a gold account ( or an extension on your current gold account) for a month.

[Ginger Tea]

Today is "no reddit day" and of those subs I go to, only one is participating.

But I don't go to the larger subs, other than Advice Animals once or twice a week, so without venturing forth and seeing what others are doing, it seems like teetotallers boycotting pubs. Prohibition isn't a thing so people are still drinking with no one outside with placards.

[Andara Bledin]

And Taylor "broke her silence." Her statement was seriously PR-sounding with a lot of love towards the people who have shown her support and zero mention of anything actually Reddit-related.

She says nothing of why she was let go or anything related to that, nothing about Reddit, and she also doesn't mention the attempted mutiny of the regulars over her departure.

I'm pretty sure pretty much nothing will come of this. The peasants might be revolting, but there are plenty more where they came from....

[TheHuckster]

And Taylor "broke her silence." Her statement was seriously PR-sounding with a lot of love towards the people who have shown her support and zero mention of anything actually Reddit-related.

I'm willing to bet she signed an NDA prohibiting her from disclosing any details or circumstances behind her termination.

[Gravekeeper]

She's likely NDA'd. The other guy from Quora however, while he has since deleted his post ( the internet is forever, silly man ), said it was due to management trying to push the commercialization of the AMAs on her. Which she was not comfortable with and objected too. So they fired her.

Cus, I dunno, $$$.

[Andara Bledin]

That was my impression from the start; it's all about the Benjamins. (baby)

They want to add more subscriber perks and things like video AMAs and such, and I don't think she wanted to go that route to the point where their differences were irreconcilable, and since they sign the paychecks, it's their way or the highway.

[Hyena Dandy]

If celebs did their own AMA's there would be no need for her, or in a less demanding role,

She was basically the contact between the celebs/publicists, and the mods running the AMA section.

[Andara Bledin]

She was basically the contact between the celebs/publicists, and the mods running the AMA section.

This.

She also vetted that the celebrities were actually doing their own AMAs and it wasn't a publicist or spokesperson behind the keyboard.

Of course, with the advent of VAMAs (Video AMAs), that part of her job would be rendered obsolete.