how ellen pao became reddit’s lee harvey oswald
TRANSCRIPT
100 | GlobeAsia August 2015
Technology
I n July, popular website Reddit found itself suddenly mired in unprecedented controversy. When the dust settled,
controversial CEO Ellen Pao resigned and those following the fiasco were left with more questions than answers. Pao’s stated reason for her departure was that the Reddit board was demanding a higher growth rate than she felt comfortable promising. Mundane sure, but many felt that given recent events at the company, the truth was likely murkier.
The trouble for Reddit began when management decided to let a popular employee named Victoria Taylor go. Taylor was well-liked among Redditors and the face of its more high-profile boards including AMA (ask me anything). Her firing prompted an almost instant outcry.
Since Taylor acted as a liaison officer between Reddit and their unpaid volunteers, the community felt betrayed and many pre-planned events had to be suddenly cancelled. Furious Redditors focused in on CEO Ellen Pao and went for her with a vengeance. Redditors were in full revolt with almost 1400 subreddits set to private in a show of solidarity with Taylor.
The uprising effectively crippled the site and a Change.org petition calling for Pao’s ouster gathered steam and was covered extensively by the media. A few days later Pao was out.
When President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963, his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, denied responsibility. Oswald’s last recorded words were reportedly “I’m just a patsy.” While the US government quickly ruled him solely responsible, a Gallup poll on the 50th anniversary of the assassination found that 61% of Americans believe the president was killed in a conspiracy. What does this have to do with Reddit? Perhaps more than you’d imagine.
The public loves a mystery but when it came to Pao, people were all too comfortable with the narrative they were fed. Redditors viewed Pao
How Ellen Pao became Reddit’s Lee Harvey Oswald
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as a cold assassin terminating Taylor for reasons unknown. In a surprising turnaround, however, it took just four days for public opinion to turn as the facts started to trickle out. It seems clear Pao was just a patsy.
Conspiracy theoryIt now appears that Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, was the one who made the decision to let Taylor go and not Ellen Pao. Ohanian, it appears, then proceeded to maintain absolute radio silence while Pao took all the heat from the community. Pao, for her part, bore her cross with dignity and stepped down when she felt she couldn’t meet expectations.
But was Pao set-up? As insiders began to spill the beans, tantalizing clues emerged that maybe there was more to this than first meets the eye. The writing was on the wall for Pao long before Taylor was fired.
Something strange about the vitriol directed at Pao was that it seemed very efficient and organized and that’s because it was. The trouble for Pao first began months ago when she introduced a new anti-harassment policy banning certain subreddits including “Fat People Hate” and some others with racist/misogynistic content. The bans were arguably good policy but ran afoul of those that felt reddit should be a bastion of free speech.
More worrying perhaps was the vicious racist hatred that underpinned the movement to oust the CEO. It’s clear in hindsight that the crowd energized behind the revolt were actually fueled by a small minority of displaced angry trolls who had suddenly found no place to spew their hate and so focused in on Pao. It’s fair to say that many who jumped on the bandwagon calling for her ouster may have had no idea just where that bandwagon had been.
News outlets meanwhile also focused on Taylor’s firing as a root cause. Few traced the
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hate all the way back to its origins. In actuality a group of antisocial characters aligned against Pao rebranded their efforts at the last moment, successfully piggy-backing off sympathy for Taylor, and leveraged it for their own aims. The movement was hijacked.
Former CEO Yishan Wong opened up recently revealing it was actually him who formalized the free speech policy, and that the policy was in no way intrinsic to Reddit. In fact, he explained that Pao’s view was more in keeping with the founders’ intent for Reddit. Wong made the following comment:
“...when I read the occasional posting here where people say ‘the founders of Reddit intended this to be a place for free speech.’ Human minds love originalism, e.g. ‘we’re in trouble, so surely if we go back to the original intentions, we can make things good again.’ Sorry to tell you guys but NO, that wasn’t their intention at all ever...”
Wong went on to explain that he learned from Reddit founder Steve Huffman that Huffman routinely shut down anything on the site he viewed as hate speech. The former CEO took responsibility for straying from the original practice in favor of free unhindered speech. A move he now sees as a mistake.
In sum of course this means that hate directed towards Pao for removing those forums is misplaced because Reddit leadership past and present all now share the view that such controls were necessary. Further, we now know that Taylor’s firing was also likely Ohanian’s doing. Calling for Pao’s head was just a case of certain people finally learning what Reddit was about (or not about: namely, hate speech) and not liking what they learnt.
Ah but they can, and are. Gawker and Fast Company were the first major outlets to peel back the first layer and question whether there was something under the surface. Pavithra Mohan of Fast Company wrote an incisive article titled “Ellen Pao, part of a ‘long con’ at Reddit?” wherein Mohan referred to a strange post first discovered by Gawker on Reddit wherein Wong appeared to half jokingly allege a conspiracy being behind it all.
Jason FernandesTech commentator and the founder of SmartKlock.
Technology
102 | GlobeAsia August 2015
against her previous employer, Kleiner Perkins. Pao was a junior partner at the firm and alleged that she was coerced into an affair with a co-worker, and then retaliated against when she tried to break it off. Pao’s suit said that the company later retaliated against her by dismissing her when she reported the incident. The jury decided in favor of Kleiner Perkins however, and Pao’s lawsuit was dismissed on all counts.
The suit made a name for her as a champion of women’s rights in a man’s industry and also a target. Pao introduced several policies at Reddit aimed to even the playing field between men and women who worked at Reddit and this, coupled with the failed lawsuit against her employers, unfortunately made her an excellent target for the misogynist racists on Reddit who were upset at the closure of their subreddits.
Not only was Pao a woman and Asian, but she was already under immense professional and personal stress, having just lost what was likely an emotionally draining lawsuit.
No shortage of suspectsJust exactly what the nail was that finally did her in we may never know. Alexis Ohanian’s deafening silence, which was sustained until after Ellen Pao’s dismissal, didn’t help. That was at best ungallant, if not downright malicious. Redditors celebrating Pao’s exit are making a mistake: As Wong views it, she may have been the only one actually trying to save the company.
The few bad seeds that had infected Reddit were making it an inferior and distracting experience for everybody else. To encourage those who just wanted to enjoy and contribute to Reddit in a positive manner, the new policies were necessary and the offensive boards would have had to go regardless. Pao was merely a scapegoat.
Even if one discounts Wong’s perhaps outrageous theory, there was a sustained effort at her removal that was either coordinated or Pao had the worse run of luck in history and everything was just a series of very unfortunate events. We may never know the truth, and its unlikely Pao’s ouster will ever capture the imagination of the internet generation the way the Kennedy assassination did so many years ago. If I were Ellen Pao though, I wouldn’t be buying lottery tickets anytime soon.
According to Wong’s post (which he ended “JUST KIDDING. There’s no way that could happen.), the root cause of the tumult at Reddit dates back to 2006 when the company was purchased by magazine publisher Conde Nast. As Wong puts it, “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.”
Wong’s post goes on to suggest that realizing their error, the founders engineered a coup (in collusion with board member Sam Altman) with the aim of wresting control of the site from Conde Nast. This would be achieved by engineering a series of leadership crises, each one slowly diluting Conde Nast’s share. The plan would culminate in the reintroduction of the founders on the board and in the CEO position, meanwhile Conde Nast would eventually be relegated to minority shareholder status.
Altman had a witty if sarcastic reply to Wong’s post: “Cool story bro. Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :) Other than that, child’s play for me. Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.”- Ouch!
Ellen Pao was not silent. In response to a poster who mused whether Altman had been kidding, Pao replied “How is this funny? /s” - Pao’s use of “/s” didn’t help clear up things because the sign generally implies sarcasm on Reddit, leaving people guessing as to whether this was all said in jest among friends, or if Redditors were watching one of those rare unscripted reality TV style moments that make the site special.
Pao the perfect patsyIt bears mentioning that if the name Ellen Pao sounds familiar to you, it’s because she just lost a high-profile sexual harassment suit she filed
A Gallup poll on the 50th anniversary of the assassination found that 61% of Americans believe President J.F. Kennedy was killed in a conspiracy. What does this have to do with Reddit? Perhaps more than you’d imagine.
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8
ords can often take on a force of their own. Once uttered, they cannot
be withdrawn. Over recent weeks the
government of President Joko Widodo has been busy meeting business leaders, economists, academics and bankers to get a better sense of what is ailing the economy.
As Suryo Bambang Sulisto, the chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), put it at a recent gathering of business leaders, “we need to get the real pulse of the economy.”
But how does one get the real pulse of the economy? For the government, it should be through mining data and looking at fundamental indicators as well as by talking to business. For the businessmen, it is studying the bottom line and sales orders.
So the question then is does anyone know what is truly ailing the Indonesian economy? There is no doubt that the broad economy is struggling.
Consumption, the key driver of gross domestic growth over the past few years, is slowing rapidly. Across the board, consumers are tightening their belts and sales are down by 30% for goods and services.
Indonesia needs to be more competitive
The government says part of the problem has been an over-reliance on imports, which has raised the current account deficit. Indonesia imports too many goods and services and does not produce enough domestically.
So import substitution has become a buzz word. At a recent event, the head of the Sahid Group told the audience that Indonesia must slash the import of manufactured goods if the country is to regain economic vigor.
But import substitution in many circles is a pseudonym for protectionism and economic nationalism. Growing economic nationalism is seen as a threat to Indonesia’s long-term economic future as it raises trade barriers and encourages poor standards.
If more and more Indonesians utter the words “import substitution” the words will take on both economic force as well as social dominance. Anyone arguing against this policy will be tainted as unpatriotic and anti-Indonesia.
No nation wishes to have its economy and currency controlled by an outside force. Every elected government has a duty to protect the self-interest of the country and the people. President Joko Widodo too has a duty to ensure that his government’s policies ultimately benefit the Indonesian people.
The challenge is how does one achieve this goal? Is import substitution the best way to do it? Or is keeping an open economy, encouraging competition and prioritizing industries in which Indonesia has a clear economic advantage the better path to take?
Shoeb KagdaEditor in Chief