> I also applaud Reddit's announcement for calling the community out on their childish BS
You mean this?
> [1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.
All that opposition - strong enough to convince "Chairman Pao" to resign - reduced to death threats? All those arbitrary bans written off as a just punishment for criminal behavior? Something tells me that we haven't seen the last of "safe space" Reddit.
Altman is not justifying the arbitrary bans (or any Reddit admin shenanigans) here, that is not the topic of this sentence.
He is talking strictly about one dangerous activity that gets offenders banned: death threats, which Ellen Pao (the human at the other end) received.
We don't know why Pao went out. We can suspect it was the backlash (more likely), or disagreements with the board [0] but we can suspect.
But that does nothing to make her opposition entirely legitimate, when at its strongest it was hijacked by namecalling, cyber-bullying, and yes, threats to Pao's life. The subset of Redditors who did this deserve to be told how shitty it is. The remaining, legitimate opposition should recognize the distinction.
I understand your point. In the announcement over at Reddit, people have noted how much of a textbook PR move this is looking like, so I'm assuming the "this is why" is equally calculated and not the whole picture.
However, you're right. The two reasons are not mutually exclusive.
Maybe she left after disagreeing with the board about how to respond to the backlash. Reddit could have easily nuked every account that disrespected and/or threatened Ms. Pao. But that would have been a different Reddit.
Do you see another reference to the overwhelming opposition inside the user base? Anything in the vein of "the mounting opposition convinced us that there's no point in fighting our users"?
Because from what I read in the announcement, the opposition is presented as a vocal, hateful and criminal minority that should absolutely not be mistaken for the "sweeping majority" that was "incredibly supportive" of the CEO.
that's a stretch. if the intent is to create a sarcastic nick-name that compares the ceo to a dictator, "chairman pao" is going to be a front-runner not because pao and mao are both chinese but because pao and mao are only 1 letter different from each other.
You can't really reason with people once they labeled something as "racist". Convincing them that they are wrong would imply that they can't differentiate between what's racist and what's not and that's something that would affect their core beliefs.
Regardless of the intention, they ARE both chinese. So is it really a stretch to see a racist element to this nick name? It is racist by default. I'm not saying that it is a greatly offensive nickname or even unfunny, but for someone to call it racist is not at all a stretch.
but they aren't denigrating her because she is Chinese. They are denigrating her because they perceive her to be a terrible CEO, and Chairman Pao is a easy way to belittle what they see as her 'authoritarian' ways
Calling someone you disagree with racist is itself racist. People call her Charmin Pao because she moved to limit free speech, increase dictatorial control, fire those who disagree with her and generally seems like dictator in here own special little way.
You mean this?
> [1] Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.
All that opposition - strong enough to convince "Chairman Pao" to resign - reduced to death threats? All those arbitrary bans written off as a just punishment for criminal behavior? Something tells me that we haven't seen the last of "safe space" Reddit.