The knife cuts both ways. The clickbait media and various groups are trying to paint the now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again. Over 200,000 people with legitimate concerns sign a petition to have Pao step down yet they still carry on with there charade.
People are sick and tired of the media and a small group of militant activists trying to silence people who they disagree with. They engage in all forms of harassment, trying to get people fired, posting addresses and family pictures etc. The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts.
The clickbait media has to be called out more then anyone for trying to turn every issue no matter how banal into a black and white battle between good and evil and then fanning the flames on both sides. Its extremely cynical mostly to drive traffic to there sites. There is zero accountability in the media today and zero ethics. Everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations.
> . The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits.
What about the subreddit comparing Ellen Pao to Pyongyang [0].
Jokes about Pao with over a +4000 positive score [1] [2] Jokes comparing Ellen Pao to Hitler. [3] I remember a post to /r/pics or /r/funny of Hitler's Wikipedia page, with Pao's photo instead of Hitler.
I ran into some old coworkers (who take Reddit WAAAY too seriously) at a bar during the weekend this whole thing was first blowing up. They were literally talking about how Pao needs to die. Then they got drunk, forgot they had ranted about her, and told me again how she needed to die.
This whole thing was really disgusting and made me hate the average Reddit user. I'll still browse some of the smaller subs, but I won't be touching the frontpage ever again.
Frankly every public figure is compared to Hitler at some point or the other on the internet. There have been pretty personal attacks on Ellen Pao on reddit, but every link you posted here is relatively mild. Similar posts and subreddits were made about Yishan Wong[1] when he was CEO. Hell, reddit also makes fun of little kids[2]. You can not police what people make fun of.
The personal attacks and name calling, which haven't been linked in your comments, were a bit much. However they were few and far in between.
The way you make the unfavorable comparisons worse is by taking them seriously. I wouldn't suggest taking those co-workers too seriously either - it probably won't help.
Ellen Pao wasn't awful, but all-in-all, it's probably a good thing she stepped down. Hopefully, next time there's a huge community changeover or staff change in reddit, everyone will talk through it and about it reasonably, and everyone will be able to bat away the easily-led and the gleeful and/or bored shit-stirrers.
What takeaway should we have about those drunken coworkers? I see roughly three possibilities:
* Their comments were funny / reasonable / etc.; there was nothing wrong with them. GP was wrong to find it disgusting.
* Their comments were bad, but there's nothing we can do about them. Our society involves it being socially acceptable to tell jokes about how people should die because of their inability to articulate clear moderation policies on a popular website, and that's unfortunate, but there's no way that we'll be able to change that social norm. (Or, alternatively, changing that social norm carries unavoidable downsides.)
* Their comments were bad, it's possible to make it no longer socially acceptable to make those jokes, and it should happen.
This doesn't really have anything to do with how seriously we take them.
The 4th option would be to just not assign a moral value to their comments, and chose for yourself as an individual to not let yourself be offended by them. It doesn't mean the co-workers were right, but it doesn't penalize them if the didn't intend to be bad (because doing so would be a slippery slope to thought policing). Unless OP thinks his/her co-workers would face Pao in person and tell her those things, or worse, act on them, then is there any reason to let their silly actions cause you any distress?
OP did not say he was offended, just disgusted. Like "haha gross, look at these shitty guys". Just like if someone starts making racist remarks, even if I don't personally believe they would murder a black person in the street, I will feel embarrassed for associating with them, and recognize that they are shitty people at the moment, and that is not a slippery slope to thought policing. That is how culture slowly fixes itself.
I don't know, where I'm from "disgusted" is a much stronger term than "offended". It's like a visceral repulsion that triggers something bordering on mild rage. I don't know how the OP intended it, but if it's as you describe, then yes, it's not too bad, but I haven't seen that term used so lightly usually.
To me disgusted and offended are unrelated. I'd personally agree that in magnitude of responses, disgusted is probably stronger, but, to me, being disgusted is about finding something to be awful, whereas being offended is like being hurt yourself. As a white guy, I am not offended if a racist guy talks about killing black people. I am disgusted, and hush the room and tell everyone to point and laugh at him.
So here's something that's always struck me as odd about these sorts of defenses of free speech. (This is something I've been thinking about for a bit, so I'm not picking on you specifically, you just reminded me of it.)
I believe in the power of speech. I believe that there is utility in being able to convey my thoughts, without someone else filtering or censoring them, to others. I believe that my words mean things, that they reflect what I believe. I believe that being a person "of your word" is an important thing: that when you say you will do something, you intend to do it. I believe that lies are, of themselves, clearly of negative moral value. (Which is not to express an opinion on whether lies can serve some greater moral good, just to say that they have inherent demerit.) I believe that if I care about my friends, I care about what they say; if I value my friends, I value what they say; if I respect my friends, I respect what they say.
It is out of that conviction that I think that restrictions on one's ability to speak, whether from a government or a private party, carry great power, which, like all power, can be abused.
If I don't assign a moral value to these coworkers' comments, if I don't care what they say, if I don't care to have opinions on their speech lest I risk "thought policing" them, if I believe that people may say bad things while intending to be good (or vice versa) and that's just okay... it seems that I have completely devalued the power of speech, and I have destroyed the very reason we care about free speech, without censoring a single word. If anyone can say anything and it could mean anything or nothing, and nobody cares, what is the point of speech?
The point of drunk, hyperbolic speech is to vent frustration. Just because some kinds of speech can raise armies doesn't mean that all kinds of speech should be treated as if they will.
What exactly is sexist about comparing someone to Hilter? Would the sexism change if the person being attacked fit under another demographic? Is it OK to criticize say Christopher Columbus because he is a white male. Please enlighten me.
Even if that's the case, they're a very visible component of Reddit's userbase, to the point that an outsider definitely might see them as representative.
If the default home page and /r/all can all be flooded with posts about her, it's not exactly a small group of extremists.
It only takes about a thousand (net) upvotes to get something to the front page.
So a very small (less than 1%) portion of the visitors can very much get things like "fire Ellen" posts onto the front page, especially when there's no opposing block of voters.
(In other words, there were no passionate defenders of Pao who were eagerly downvoting the posts that trashed her. There were only anti-Pao zealots, and a much larger userbase that simply didn't care much at all. Count me in the latter, FWIW.)
What about it? If you are a public figure these are pretty common. On the same ground, would you go an extra mile like this post when somebody comparing donald trump to hitler? Your political bias goes both ways...
> but it's certainly enough to become the loudest voice on the website.
This is true of all forms of fundamentalism, off-line or on. and in all cases despite being the minority opinion it generally makes the entire environment they touch suck.
Just because no-one is literally drawing a moral equivalence between her and Hitler doesn't mean it's not a shitty thing to say, or that you're not a dick for saying it.
I think you would be a dick to send that joke to /u/ekjp, and it's a bit crass for a dinner party, but it's well within bounds on a pseudonymous forum called "Jokes".
Now, I think one could make the argument that /r/Jokes should be more heavily moderated because it's a default sub, and should cater to a more vanilla, easily offended audience.
> The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts.
Oh please. You can disclaim the disgusting statements made all over reddit recently as not part of a coherent community or whatever, but don't pretend they didn't exist at all.
As for the rest of this nonsense, the statement quoted had nothing to do with "clickbait media and various groups" (I seriously feel like we're in talking points memos territory with this stuff), this is a statement from Sam Altman, so take it up with him.
> There is zero accountability in the media today and zero ethics. Everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations.
I mean, seriously, what on earth are you addressing here? Who are you talking to?
What's happening right now isn't entirely intuitive, so it's understandable to be a bit lost, but what the parent is talking about is a serious, legitimate issue.
Pick a topic with many shades of gray. Paint it black and white - preferably around a modern controversial issue (this day and age it's sexism/racism).
Frame the narrative to fit the controversy ("50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again!") Ignore the 199,950 shades of gray and all other motivation behind the users and everything else. Zoom in to these 50 people. Cast them in the worst light. Cast Pao as a saint and Reddit as being "in the right" for "standing up to these 50 white male racist misogynist neck beards".
Fan the flames and stir the pot to generate traffic (and ad revenue).
Keep the fire alive as long as possible. You look good and get money. Reddit looks good and gets money. You both win.
Alternatively throw Reddit under the bus as well and find past controversies surrounding Pao. Cover those as well. You'll get more money for this.
As for all the users who aren't the 50 being covered? Fuck'em. You're too busy lining your checkbooks.
You think "the media" is intentionally causing confrontation as part of some collusion with Reddit to make money? Neither Reddit nor journalism generally is particularly profitable.
And isn't painting all of the media in the same cynical light for the actions of, at most, a small minority pretty much exactly what you claim they did to you?
I saw racist and sexist posts personally, so I know that's not a complete fabrication even if not every Redditor holds those beliefs. I found the posts of e.g. Pao as Hitler pretty jarring. If I were writing an article about Reddit and its CEO I probably would have mentioned them, not through any desire to stir trouble and certainly not as part of some money-making conspiracy.
And what does any of this have to do with Sam Altman or Ellen Pao?
> You think "the media" is intentionally causing confrontation as part of some collusion with Reddit to make money?
GP isn't implying any collusion. The media is intentionally causing confrontation just fine on its own.
> I saw racist and sexist posts personally
Nobody is claiming the hateful stuff didn't exist. But painting "Reddit" as sexist while conveniently ignoring the 90-9-1 rule and focusing on Pao's gender instead of atrocious track record is... in bad taste, to say the least.
It's jarring -- that is, newsworthy -- to see overt sexist or racist remarks with hundreds of upvotes, suggesting at least widespread if not majority support. So, yeah, that fact is going to find its way into many articles.
What is the argument against Pao anyway? It seems like the only non-personal complaints I've heard are that FatPeopleHate was banned and a well-liked moderator was fired on her watch. Is there more to it?
There's lots more to it. While I agree with the banning of FPH, the underlying policy that justified it was deeply flawed. The harassment policy was woefully vague to the point of absurdity.
There's the fact that she promised better moderator tools something like 6 months ago, and as we found out today, only last week dedicated employees to work on it; after the defaults revolted.
This is a small subset of all of the complaints of reddit's direction under Pao's leadership.
Honestly, I think she's a lovely person. I don't think she deserves a percent of the shit that's been thrown her way, but she definitely hasn't been an efficient CEO for reddit.
and by lots you mean...that's about it. Honestly if "There's the fact that she promised better moderator tools something like 6 months ago" was a good criteria for booting a CEO, Reddit would have had ~20 CEOs by now.
That was the actual problem, that mods have never had the tools they need, but that's not why she's resigning/being fired.
No, there's more to it. Because I don't want to drag her personal life into it (which does play a role), there were the huge problems with the AMA app, the new privacy policy (which while I agreed with, many didnt), Reddit Notes (the reddit cryptocurrency; perhaps the most jaw-droppingly stupid move in her tenure), and really, many more things.
You must be detached from reality and what a CEO does if you think those deserve being fired for. And seriously even insinuating that her personal life has anything to do with this is frankly disgusting behaviour.
Let me ask you about Brendan Eich, previously CEO of Mozilla. He contributed money to anti-prop 8 causes in California. He was fired from Mozilla because he supported anti-gay marriage causes. Was it wrong of mozilla to fire him because of his support?
If you say it was wrong, I will respect that we have different views on this issue.
If you think it's OK to fire Eich but not even bring up Pao's personal life, I will call you a hypocrite.
What you're describing are basically non-events in the history of bad decisions made at reddit (and like half of them come from Yishan's tenure, anyways). And reddit survived just fine every time, mind you.
There really wasn't anything overly egregious here except an angry internet mob. If it weren't for the subreddit blackout (which, again, was from an issue boiling over for years) timed so soon after the FPH shutdown I would give good odds it would have dissipated and we wouldn't be seeing this resignation today.
She was the CEO, she ultimately bore responsibility for every single decision made in her tenure. Regardless if initiatives were started under a previous CEO, she allowed bad decisions to be made public in her tenure where she had the power to stop them.
Like it or not, the CEO is ultimately responsible for every single thing a company does. That's pretty much their job.
Edit: Also, I have been on reddit for nearly 10 years. I've followed every stupid decision made since comments were implemented. I have never seen a period of bad decisions like this before Pao.
Edit 2: I also think it's sort of shitty for you to move the goalposts. You basically said "there's nothing else major" about Pao to criticize. As soon as I brought up three more things to criticize - well, they weren't important and everyone else is responsible.
Victoria's firing was the final straw. The general complaint is that moderators are in an abusive unpaid relationship with reddit and are treated like crap, that she is/was completely out of touch with the reddit userbase (going so far as posting a link to her own inbox in /r/self in a grandma-emailing-c:\\paths.jpg fashion; something she later explained as an administrative mishap), that she got rid of well-liked programs such as redditgifts and was behind other much less popular programs and very unpopular decisions on the site. And the whole lawsuit thing didn't help, either.
She doesn't deserve the blame for all of it, but things easily snowball on reddit. Once the mob finds its pitchforks, there's no stopping it. That's not unique to reddit in any way.
>It's jarring -- that is, newsworthy -- to see overt sexist or racist remarks with hundreds of upvotes, suggesting at least widespread if not majority support. So, yeah, that fact is going to find its way into many articles.
There is a polarising effect which occurs in these kinds of threads (or communities discussions as a whole): once the vitriol has met a critical mass the more moderate people tend to just avoid the whole thing (not participating, likely not even observing). So all that's left are the extremists who keep perpetuating it.
> Like what? That she shut down a forum called "Fat people hate", where posters singled out the obese for online harrassment?
You don't know me. You have no idea what my feelings are regarding FPH. Yet, you make assumptions.
So now we got that out of the way, hi, I'm Jerry, and I hated FPH and didn't give a rat's arse about its shutdown. Had Pao made only that one decision in her two years as CEO, reddit would have bigger problems on its hands.
Thankfully, I just wrote a reply to someone else's comment right below yours - a much nicer comment which asks a question without making aggressive assumptions - addressing your actual question. Take a look.
> Criticising Reddit or its community is in bad taste? Seriously?
The thing with rephrasing what someone else said and appending "Seriously?" is it always goes your way, because you get to decide how you rephrase it. Good thing again that I didn't say "Criticising Reddit or its community is in bad taste". I said:
> painting "Reddit" as sexist while conveniently ignoring the 90-9-1 rule and focusing on Pao's gender instead of atrocious track record [is in bad taste].
In other words, trying to turn millions of people into sexist pigs by ignoring how such communities function is in bad taste. Do you disagree?
> And isn't painting all of the media in the same cynical light for the actions of, at most, a small minority pretty much exactly what you claim they did to you?
Of course. No one's evil, everything's broken. The reason offensive and controversial discussions are so common throughout the interent is that they self-perpetuate; something makes you angry and you make a post 'debunking' it, that makes someone else angry and they reply; the more efficient posts at making people angry get more replies, and so are brought into prominence.
did you happen to miss how sites like the NYTimes and such were disappointed with how her case played out? How that and and another played out? They have their playbook and cannot see outside of it to the point they are no longer able to see the world for what it is.
Social Justice has infected the media to the point that anything contrary to the desired story is either ignored, recast, or dismissed. You can go google the Confederate flag issue and find far too many stories trying to link Republicans with it when it was Democrat politicians who put it up fifty years ago and kept it there; apparently it was just too good an opportunity to slander the Republicans for something the Democrats didn't fix for the fifty plus years they controlled most of those states.
So yeah, the media intentionally causes confrontation and likely because the same focus groups they use/rely on are merely political machines created to drive people one way or another. Politicians and the media both need a divided population and they both damn well do their best to get it.
Honestly Reddit in general could be taken as "racist and sexist" by an outsider. By an outsider. The humor tends to be sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, and in-group. For example any references to /r/pyongyang can be written off, 99% of the time it's part of a dedicated running joke that's not intentionally malicious. Pao as Hitler is jarring? You seem naively unfamiliar with Reddit.
Basically, the nature of the internet and how it enables individuals to have much louder voices, has significant implications for the integrity and expectations of what we used to consider "news". The point being that the old idea of 'news' as many of us are used to, as being something that's even semi reliable, needs some serious rethinking, because 'news' undergoes significantly less curation now that outlets are competing against the lightning pace of social media.
The author gives his own various experiences as examples of how this new style of information flow in the media industry is easily exploitable, and frankly, it's quite scary. Not just because of what he could do, but because how natural and subtle it all the 'propaganda' seemed.
You do realize you're commenting on a HN thread for a New York Times piece, right?
A piece that casually included terms such as "racist" and "misogynistic" as if they were describing the weather. If those terms do sound natural enough to use in something as casual as describing the weather, then congratulations, you've discovered the dangers that this book tried to highlight.
You lost me. What is the linked article supposed to be an example of? Would we be having a different conversation if the thread linked to the Reddit announcement instead?
And I don't think racism or sexism is something to be taken lightly. I don't think the New York Times does either, which is probably why the fact that there were racist and misogynistic posts about Ellen Pao was noteworthy enough to include in 8th graf of the article.
> What is the linked article supposed to be an example of?
It's an example of exactly what the book talks about: subtle, lightly filtered "news".
> Would we be having a different conversation if the thread linked to the Reddit announcement instead?
No, because if you read my previous summary of the book, you would realize that the mechanisms in these two outlets is exactly the same. A single highly emphasized voice/view, with little curation/filtering, being projected loudly through network effects.
If you're still unsure about what I'm talking about, or how it fits in, I can only recommend that you pick up the book. It's really quite an interesting and quick read. And interestingly, the issue you're having of having difficulty seeing what I'm talking about, is basically exactly what the book talks about.
Are those "racist" and "misogynistic" claims false? Judging by the top post(s), here https://www.reddit.com/r/Ellenpaoinaction/top/?sort=top&t=al... I would say no. That's pretty "racist" and "misogynistic". There was another sub reddit that was worse, but I can't seem to find it on my phone.
If you think the NYT article made those claims lightly (I don't) then I think that says more about the state of the Internet and its communities in general (or perhaps just you) rather than "The Media"
The point isn't whether it's "true" or "false", because that will vary depending on who you ask. Yes, even people you find disgusting are legitimate human beings with opinions too. Who are any of us to decide what is "right" or "wrong"? Good journalism is supposed to let you make those decisions on your own, not give them to you.
So in order to be good journalism, it must be objective, and to not describe things in terms of loaded phrases that convey any opinions. The opinions may be right, or they may be wrong, but that has nothing to do with the problem. The problem is the one highlighted in the book, which is that our news isn't getting properly filtered, and as a result, we're being shown rather restricted points of view in our media.
If current media organizations were run with proper journalistic merit, almost 99% of what gets published out there as 'news', would be filed in the editorials section.
It seems you missed what I tried to convey. I explicitly stated that the issue is objectiveness, and subjective terms, by definition cannot be objective. You can gather all the data in the world about reddit users and their mannerisms, but that does not change the way the logic behind 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' work.
I think the overwhelming majority of our society will agree that the mentioned behaviour was misogynistic. That makes it a fairly objective statement. You can still disagree with it (in the same way people disagree with other objective statements, like vaccines and autism), but that doesn't make it subjective.
It's really not as obvious as you're making it sound. According to google, the most concrete definition of "misogyny" is: "an ingrained prejudice against women."
So immediately there are 2 problems here:
1.) Ellen Pao does not represent all women, nor would all women agree for her to represent them most likely. So dislike of Pao does not conclusively imply a dislike of women in general. Especially when we keep in mind the context of people being upset about a female employee being fired.
2.) Even if we assume that yes, Ellen Pao did represent all women, that still does not imply that the public's sentiments against her were somehow "ingrained" or unjustified. She did decide to ban several subreddits before the latest incident with Victoria (which may or may not have involved Pao). The anger may have been unjustly directed towards her specifically when it should've been directed towards Reddit management in general, but being a lightning rod for bad press has always been an unspoken the function of CEOs. It may not conclusively prove that the anger directed at her was purely due to management issues, but it does cast doubt about it being because she was a woman.
So the issue here is not that something can't be pseudo-objective if enough people agree, it's that the claim is not specific enough to be meaningful, and these kinds of terms are usually just used as social trump cards that discourage questioning, which again, is the opposite of what journalism is supposed to be about.
It has democratized the distribution of information or opinion. In the old days, as A.J. Liebling said, "The freedom of the press applies mainly to the man who owns one." (Quoted from memory, so probably a bit wrong.) Those men, and the occasional woman, were a very mixed lot.
I'd also appreciate it. Just note many of our minds won't be blown by the idea that the media is used to manipulate, and maybe focus on explaining what this has to do with nhf's points that this is a good move on reddit's part and that they were glad that Sam explicitly called out recent trends in Reddit discourse.
So questioning ethics in any kind of journalism anywhere is automatically BS now because of some random highly-opinionated internet drama? Way to discourage critical thinking. Orwell and Huxley would be proud.
No, abruptly trying to turn a conversation about disgusting comments made on reddit into one on the "clickbait media has to be called out" is like a parody of the parodies of gamergate. I mean, it's like well into Poe's law territory.
Did you even follow the original parent's argument? He didn't just bring up "clickbait media" as a non-sequitur while defending reddit comments. He highlighted how everything in this whole mess so far can be explained through the lens of questionable media, and literally none of his analysis+critique has been addressed so far, all that's been done is point out how he sounded like some angry mob person. Please explain to me how that is a logical way to respond to a legitimate argument.
> He highlighted how everything in this whole mess so far can be explained through the lens of questionable media
What "everything" are you referring to here? That's the problem with addressing this "analysis+critique". There's almost nothing being analyzed or critiqued. This was a pretty minor story even in the tech blogs, let alone major news outlets.
> This was a pretty minor story even in the tech blogs, let alone major news outlets.
This is currently the #1 post on HN. It might not be the biggest community, but it is influential, and many people bypass visiting blogs/sites and come directly here for their news. Things don't have to be on the front page of Time magazine to leave an impact on interested communities. And here, clearly people are interested enough in this matter to make it the most highly commented submission on the front page right now. So to try and paint a popular HN item as pointless chump change is quite disingenuous.
> It might not be the biggest community, but it is influential, and many people bypass visiting blogs/sites and come directly here for their news.
So then what does this have to do with "questioning ethics in any kind of journalism"??
I am a commenter on HN and a redditor and am in no way related to the "clickbait media", so how are my contributions to this thread "explained through the lens of questionable media"?
The problem is the deflection. It started as a discussion about the actual situation, but apparently "everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations", and is now about...biased HN posts? I really have no idea.
If you were worried about that, you should have discussed the actual situation and addressed what you thought were misrepresentations, not going off on some tangent about media ethics.
> I am a commenter on HN and a redditor and am in no way related to the "clickbait media", so how are my contributions to this thread "explained through the lens of questionable media"?
Herein lies the problem: there is increasingly less of a difference between you or I, some "random strangers on the internet", and 'trusted' news sources like the New York Times. So it's not so much that we're not related to the 'clickbait' media, it's that the media is now mirroring us, unfiltered, and many don't realize that this is basically the modern MO of 'news reporting'. The lines are blurring as a side effect of the influence social media has, that's the danger.
> It started as a discussion about the actual situation, but apparently "everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations", and is now about...biased HN posts? I really have no idea.
Yeah, I agree. It's certainly hard to follow, but we are on a platform that makes misinformation incredibly easy to produce. Technology is unfortunately a double-edged sword like that.
> If you were worried about that, you should have discussed the actual situation and addressed what you thought were misrepresentations, not going off on some tangent about media ethics
I agree, it would be nice, but at this point it'd be like playing whack-a-mole, with changing definitions of what it means to be a 'mole'. It's unfortunate, but it'd be pretty difficult to keep up with every possible distortion even if we tried, so the best I can do is just remind people that "hey, even when I'm not around to remind you, you should probably try to question things that you believe and might've picked up from somewhere".
Saying that online activists are equally to blame as misogynists and racists for the devolution of civil dialog online is sort of like insisting on creationism getting equal media coverage to evolution on the basis of fairness.
If your plan to get rid of the trolls is to feed them by bringing their trolling out of the dark confines of message boards and trying to shame them in public, congratulations, you've fed the trolls, and inspired other proto-trolls (goblins, kobalds, I need a D&D person here...) to snicker in their caverns and sling their troll arrows at you.
If you start trying to troll the trolls, you're laying on a feast of HGH-laden troll-bait.
People have always been shitty to each other. The internet tends to act as a force multiplier for shittiness, allowing people to be shitty to each other at extreme distances, and with much improved protections from the immediate consequences. Once was a time, I hear, where if you insulted somebody in the public square, you had to be ready to drop the gloves if the insultee took it harshly. I dunno, I came in just at the very end of when it was considered acceptable for children to wrassle, and not grounds for throwing them, or maybe their parents, too, in jail.
One person's "freedom fighter" is another person's "terrorist". For matters like these, it's better if we stick to the few objective observations we can make, such as deconstructing how arguments are made, and when/where they're propagated, which is exactly what the original comment tried to do.
The irony in this comment about not discouraging critical thinking whilst shaming someone drawing a parallel... first overstating the GP's case to extremes, then doing a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum...
There's no reason why my comments shouldn't be analyzed critically either. So if you feel up to it, please do so. But the comment I responded to did not exhibit any logical analyses, nor any reminders to remain analytical.
My point is that you're being a hypocrite, demanding someone else not discourage critical thinking, while exhibiting logical fallacies yourself. Shaming someone about 'discouraging critical thinking' through the use of a strawman is particularly egregious.
Critical thinking just involves analysis of arguments presented. If my arguments were fallacious, then I apologize, but you haven't exactly clarified how exactly I exaggerated the OP's claims, as opposed to just summarized them. I'll accept the godwin's law card, that was a slip.
Secondly, I did notice your analysis, but I was referring to the general "you", so that others can feel free to chime in and critique as well.
"this reminds me of gamergate" => "questioning ethics in any journalism anywhere"
It's a fairly stock form of strawman, taking someone's opinion and extrapolating it to the extreme. There are qualitative parallels between this event and gamergate, and the GP was mentioning them. I thought the same as the GP. But questioning ethics in any journalism anywhere? Seriously? For example, people question the ethics of Rupert Murdoch's empire and those of the UK tabloid culture, yet that public questioning is not reminiscent at all of gamergate.
I certainly don't see Murdoch getting numerous vitriolic rape threats because of his questionable journalistic ethics.
The comment was intending to cast doubt about a critique of the news article posted here. This article has nothing to do with gamergate, and the critique had nothing to do with gamergate. The comment could've elaborated on the parallels and presented a thoughtful analysis about that, but that's not what was posted. Thus if there was no blatant relationship between these events, and none were elaborated or clearly argued for, then what is the rule for applying this whole "integrity in journalism argument" => "gamergate" => BS chain of logic? If there is none, then by definition, it can be applied anywhere. So I don't see how my comment is logically invalid in pointing this out.
I also hope you realize that your comparison between this article and gamergate is about as valid as my original one was to orwell & huxley; i.e. it's pointless to just point out and insinuate some kind of similarity unless you clarify what it is you're actually trying to argue. Pointing things out like that without explanation just gives the impression that you want to throw the negative connotations of events like gamergate (or the holocaust for hitler analogies) onto unrelated arguments to silence them.
And finally, the problems with media run farther than just the bigtime moguls out there like Murdoch, and as I've already mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's a direct byproduct of the influence social media has had, and this is more thoroughly elaborated on in the book "Trust Me, I'm Lying". That book came out well before gamergate even happened, yet random questions about the dubious journalistic practices this book outlines are all somehow related to that silly gamergate incident?
No, just because the GP didn't elaborate reasons for the comparison does not make your strawman not a strawman. You put words into badsock's mouth, and then applied shame for things badsock didn't say. "This reminds me of gamergate" is not "any criticism of any journalistic ethics anywhere", period.
Similarly, my 'there are parallels' and your 'huxley and orwell' aren't the same. You say that it's pointless to present without clarification, yet I presented the comment dispassionately and gave some counter-examples to clarify. Your huxley/orwell comment was a snarky comment, based off a strawman.
You're also confusing my point with the GP's. While I agree with the GP, my point is not that this event is reminiscent of gamergate, but that you're behaving hypocritically.
The only thing I am saying, is that even mentioning negative events such as gamergate, triggers in readers the negative connotations associated with them, and it is a common tactic to sully opponent's arguments for that reason. So when possible, it is good to avoid those kinds of unproductive remarks unless there's a good tie-in, which so far there hasn't been, and I already elaborated on why it doesn't make any sense for there to be in my previous comment. If you seriously think that saying
> those last two lines read to me like a callout to #gamergate's "It's about ethics in journalism" BS.
was just a simple "This reminds me of gamergate", then you are the one putting words in people's mouths. The intention lies in the words "read to me like", implying that the original comment that was in response to, was invoking connotations of the gamergate event.
You are also applying the definitions of these fallacies you are mentioning rather selectively. Because if I am a hypocrite, then your argument that those gamergate parallels are more valid than the godwin invocations is equally hypocritical. A logical fallacy is not a matter of degree, it is a binary evaluation: either an argument is valid or it is not.
> even mentioning [negativity]... So when possible, it is good to avoid those kinds of unproductive remarks unless there's a good tie-in
So then why are you shaming people with snarky remarks about Orwell? You say you aren't a hypocrite, yet you're doing exactly the thing you say shouldn't be done?
Anyway, I'm tired and bored, and couldn't be bothered reading more of your efforts to somehow argue that a widespread shrill grassroots online hate campaign over 'media ethics'; a female target; based on faulty, incomplete data; in the internet political culture specific to the current time... should put absolutely no-one in mind of gamergate ahead of any other particular event. The two events apparently share no commonalities. You're using me as a sort of playing field for the academic parlour-game of seeing if you can spin-doctor the way out, and frankly, I couldn't be fucked continuing.
I did admit wrong on the orwell part, but you seem to be taking this quite personally to be releasing that kind of frustration out so needlessly without even addressing any of my points. If anything, that shows you have clear bias there, but I need not point it out very much, for your frustration with this debate should've made that quite clear by now. Strong emotions always cloud analytical thinking. And it doesn't matter what arguments anybody may propose to you if you have already made up your mind that much, so arguing under the guise of objectivity or logical correctness is quite disingenuous.
a) From my first reponse, I've been addressing your points. I haven't addressed every single last one of your points, just like you haven't done so with mine, because discussion works that way. Not to mention we'd end up with immense walls of text if we did. I just opted out in that last one, for obvious, declared reasons.
and
b) When the argument switches from arguing about a topic to arguing about the nature of the argument itself, it's boring. You can play semantic games into perpetuity like that. I've been arguing online since before the turn of the century; when it gets to this stage, it never goes anywhere, it's never interesting, and there's never any further insight to be gained by anyone.
My apologies though, I did forget your acknowledgment of the godwin stuff.
The topic at hand is journalism and misogyny. That particular phrasing was often used as a thin veil over many vile attacks on women in visible positions during the gamergate thing. I see a lot of similarities with what happened to Pao (not that I'm defending her in particular, she's pretty dodgy, but the hatred was palpable).
And really, you're on HN, this is not the place where you need to fly the "don't trust the media" flag with such earnestness. I doubt many people here do, certainly not me.
> And really, you're on HN, this is not the place where you need to fly the "don't trust the media" flag with such earnestness. I doubt many people here do, certainly not me.
This is another common trope that happens a lot. We as HN readers are not any more special or immune to proven psychological tactics than anyone else. We are all still humans after all. This elitist sort of viewpoint that HNers are somehow smarter, better, or faster than most people at nearly everything isn't very helpful. I guarantee there are many people here that could benefit from 'basic' knowledge like this, because we all have our biases.
You can know not to trust most media, and apply it to 99.9% of the media outlets you encounter, but if that remaining 0.1% are sources like the New York Times or Fox News, because for whatever reason, your experiences led you to believe they were 'reliable', then knowing that 'you shouldn't trust most media' is useless when those outlets do you a disservice.
It's not elitist to think that the average HN reader doesn't need a reminder that you shouldn't blindly trust the media interjected into any random discussion that involves the media. Most of us read 1984 in high school, just like you probably did.
What's elitist is to think that the other camp only holds their opinion because they've been duped by the media, and that you're the one that's managed to see through it all with your superior scepticism, which is what generic_user is basically doing with their "The knife cuts both ways" comment.
Seriously. Somehow this topic became a slightly less obnoxious Gamergate twittergasm.
So, does anyone have guesses as to what the material issues were in the board wanting her gone? I confess to having little interest in Reddit most of the time, so I haven't paid attention to what's going on there (outside of the recent firing-related explosion).
The most disgusting posting I have seen is by our good friends the yellow journalists trying to weave there 'Reddit is misogynist' narrative. While Redditors are upset that Pao fires perhaps the most competent and well liked woman working at Reddit.
Urinalism is largely discredited at this point due to there bias and agenda.
Redditors do not know anything about who works at Reddit, so they could not possibly be upset at the firing of "the most competent person". Most well liked public facing one to some people who read one of the subreddits, sure.
Victoria was beloved despite the fact she was a woman, not necessarily because of it. I understand what you're trying to say, but it doesn't really hold up.
Well isn't that a convenient narrative? Any woman the community likes is despite the fact she's a woman. Anyone they dislike is because she's a woman. The outrage writes itself!
I never said someone should be liked because of their gender. It's just that using Victoria as a defense for Reddit's consistently juvenile view of women doesn't really work.
My favorite thing about Pao's loudest critics are how bad they are --- like, "ethics in gaming journalism" bad --- at concealing their agenda. "there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits", "even the media has to admit these things are facts". Real slick, there.
I don't understand the preoccupation with the "media." It doesn't seem to me like news sites had much to do with this saga.
Is there a mountain of unfair coverage I didn't see? It seems kind of obvious that Reddit is much more "the media" than any clickbait news site. And wasn't the whole point of "blacking out" subreddits to gain media attention?
> The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits
Why the fuck is someone else's sexual harassment lawsuit with their former employer any of your concern? Unless you have a political agenda against women who complain about sexual harassment.
> People are sick and tired of ... a small group of militant activists trying to silence people who they disagree with.
You're damn right people are tired of the shrill MRAs with their short-sighted, selfish, and immature wails, who can't think of anyone but themselves. They're a small group of militant activists crying over what amounts to a skinned knee, always trying to shout down other people, but never being pro-active and creating events of their own.
Honest question, what do you think is an appropriate set of measures to curtail [people you don't like] on the internet? Do you believe the internet should be a safe space?
No, I don't think the internet should be sanitised. But at the same time, I find the MRA shrill talking-points to be of a pretty shallow depth, and, as a group, they're pretty vocally violent. In contrast, I find feminist talking-points to have a fair amount of depth to them. Those feminists who conduct themselves in the shrill manner that MRAs do are just as bad, but when you take those kinds of people away and look at what's left over, it's quite different.
So how should you counter people you don't like? Well, by trying to be mature, and if you fail, trying for better next time. Death threats and rape threats are never okay. Especially if the person in question is not forcing themselves into your life - people go to reddit, reddit does not force themselves into living rooms and makes you read it, nor do many people pay for it.
For the record, I am a white male. I loathe the MRA crowd because they're purely reactionary. Men do have systemic social issues that need addressing, but in general, the MRA crowd isn't actually interested in exploring, discussing, and addressing the issues. Instead, they use men's issues as a weapon with which to beat down discussion that other people are having; there is very little that is proactive in that crowd. For example, here on HN, pretty much all the men's rights stuff has been presented as some sort of counterpoint to a perceived feminist slight... yet these same shrill voices that demand we pay attention to the issues faced by men... never post articles in their own right, only weaponised comments to win internet points.
Threats of violence are never okay unless you're being physically threatened. Immature commentary should never be at the forefront of a social movement, since it's never going to solve root causes and can only provide a superficial salve. These things are destructive, and are all about making the other side lose - an ideal outcome is a win-win situation, though that's not always possible, of course.
I found that quite rational and civil, which is more I can say for any other discussion I have ever seen about this subject matter.
> never post articles in their own right, only weaponised comments to win internet points.
On balance I think things are fairly equal, honestly women might be slightly better off. There is a very loud minority angrily decrying people who post pro-male articles and such, and the news and media are not interested in it unless it is to point out that he was a MRA killer from 4chan.
That being said, I have become apathetic to these tropic debates (women in tech, gamergate, feminism v antifeminsim, etc) and now just largely support free speech and freedom of expression. This has the potential to make many people upset, and a select few targets of extreme harassment. On balance, however I think it is the most powerful tool in our society.
Your civil comment was quite a nice departure from my regular observations, cheers.
There are dozens of posts with 1000+ upvotes comparing Ellen with Hitler. As far as I can tell, there's something larger and terrible going on within reddit's community.
Bush was compared to Hitler endlessly. But that probably didn't bother you. Public figures, especially unpopular ones, are subject to ridicule. It happens.
Literally (in the actual sense of this word) there are 160 million unique users on reddit monthly. Personally, I applaud free speech even when it is extremely hateful as I would not trade my right to speak my mind for protection from others voices[0]. However, even if I didn't believe that, I do believe that it is wrong to judge a large group of people based on the actions of a small minority.
[0] I get that the websites are private, before anyone points that out.
Could you possibly believe many of those same people also post here?! HN would just flag and ban you for saying it right off that bat.
Most people you know are in some form or fashion, an asshole. They quietly be a racist, sexist, nationalist to an extreme, have a fetish far beyond the norm, or other strange or socially unacceptable behavior. They just don't personally show it to you to avoid the judgement. It just seems like there are a whole lot more of them on Reddit because Reddit doesn't silence them. Let that settle in for a little bit. It's the anti-gay pastor that gets caught with a man, for example. That said, people are allowed to show their more negative sides without any repercussions things can become problematic and the more extreme can take over a community if enabled.
> now predictable narrative of '50 white male racist misogynist neck beards' who want to chase women out of tech again
This is a pretty accurate narrative. You may not agree, but casual misogyny is incredibly pervasive on most defaults, and it's fairly prevalent within the smaller, community-based subs as well.
> small group of militant activists trying to silence people who they disagree with
If you're referring to SRS, they're annoying and take themselves far too seriously, but as far as I know they don't try to silence anyone.
> The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits.
I'm not even going to address how laughably absurd your characterization of consistent harassment, abuse, and terrifyingly legitimate rape and death threats as "criticism" is. Most people were upset with Pao because she was part of an executive decision to shut down FatPeopleHate and a couple of other abusive subreddits. It's quite a stretch to say that she was solely responsible for this decision, and even then, it's sobering that people would respond with scathing, fiery, and highly toxic personal and threatening attacks on a decision that was intended to help people be kinder to each other -- and worse, lobbed on someone that had at most 2/5ths of the executive power to make that decision.
The media didn't turn the shaky relationship between reddit's users and their administrators into a black-and-white affair. Reddit itself did, by using Pao as a scapegoat to attack everything they saw as antithetical to freedom of hatred and abuse under the guise of "free speech."
> If you're referring to SRS, they're annoying and take themselves far too seriously, but as far as I know they don't try to silence anyone.
I'm a feminist,and can't stand a lot of the stuff that goes on on reddit.
That said, censorship on that website is rampant. Reddit is trying to monetize, and that means stifling speech, especially that speech critical of corporate governance.
The issue isn't as black and white as you make it. There are people with legitimate grievances. And there are people who are being sexist pigs.
Reddit will tell their userbase that the whole fiasco was Pao's fault. They will tell the board and investors that the userbase is sexist.
They think it's win win, but they are on a sinking ship.
But Reddit wasn't attacking corporatocracy or actual censorship. They were just trying to defend their right to be dicks to other people through abusive and hateful subs.
The right to free speech is not the right to speech without consequence. And what obligation does reddit have to preserve "free speech" in the first place? They run the website and it is fully up to them what gets filtered through and what sticks. It's not beholden to the first amendment.
> But Reddit wasn't attacking corporatocracy or actual censorship.
Are you sure? I frankly saw much more of this than the other. I, of course, have a bias, but I think people were focused on censorship.
And you're right. Reddit doesn't owe anyone free speech. But with all due respect, that's the product that they developed. Crowdsourced content aggregation is a useful service, but it's one that is entirely dependent on having "free speech".
If corporations or government can shape the dialogue on a website like reddit, it fundamentally undermines the purpose of having a service that aggregates upvotes.
Reddit can control and censor all they want. But it will take them from having a unique product and niche to being another viral editorial board in a sea of crappy viral editorial boards.
People have the right to free speech. People have the right to be offended by things. And people have a right to leave a service when it stops existing as it once did.
That's a two year old link to a sub whose whole intent is to be as diametrically opposed to the SRS sub as possible. If you're trying to strike a point here, I think it'd be much more effective to link to something that's more impartial and up-to-date.
I completely agree with you. That was nothing but a lazy search. I'm not heavily invested in the sub. However to claim the sub's intent is to be "diametrically opposed to SRS' is incorrect. It has not war against SRS. It's a watch dog.
I really detest the term "casual misogyny", as if everyone is living their lives just "casually" having this deep hatred for women. It so easily deflects any criticism or real discussion because well obviously they're all just casual misogynists.
I think people confuse making some jokes about women with "casual misogyny." People make jokes about everything, including stereotypes of women. Maybe that's in poor taste, and maybe they deserve to be called out for that if it's inappropriate, but it certainly doesn't mean they hate women.
Regardless of the actual numbers (I have no idea what they are), I wouldn't expect the CEO of Reddit to effectively announce to prospective advertisers that their user base was a bunch of racists.
People are sick and tired of the media and a small group of militant activists trying to silence people who they disagree with. They engage in all forms of harassment, trying to get people fired, posting addresses and family pictures etc. The most critical things against Pao and her husband I have seen are posts about there phony extortion sexism and racism law suits. All of which is factual information available to the public and even the media has to admit these things are facts.
The clickbait media has to be called out more then anyone for trying to turn every issue no matter how banal into a black and white battle between good and evil and then fanning the flames on both sides. Its extremely cynical mostly to drive traffic to there sites. There is zero accountability in the media today and zero ethics. Everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations.