If you’ve checked Reddit recently, you would’ve seen big topics and even subreddits such as /r/Ellen_pao_hate and Ellen Pao fan club. This topic took Reddit by storm in early July due to Pao’s resignation from Reddit. She was forced to resign due to the hateful comments from redditors all over the world. The NY Times article attached opens up more into this controversial topic and its history.
Ellen Pao was the intermediate CEO of Reddit, and was almost immediately attacked by redditors due to her past decisions. The reason why Pao is a hate target of Reddit is because of her gender discrimination lawsuit against her previous employer Kleiner Perkins Claufield & Byers. She was also to blame for a dismissal of a popular Reddit employee, which enraged the members of reddit.
The Times article also uses a ethos appeal, quoting Pao and other employees of Reddit. The article also uses the number 213,000- the number of redditors who signed a petition for her dismissal. I’m truly surprised that there weren’t more petitioners, since Reddit hosts around 160 million users.
Mike Isaac and David Streitfeld, co-writers of this article from The New York Times, use images of Reddit’s office space in order to stay unbiased. The writers use mostly ethos to bring an unbiased approach to Pao’s reputation. There are several quotes from Pao and her former coworkers that show exactly what happened during the whole process. Isaac and Streitfeld do a great job staying impartial throughout the article.
We all know that the internet is a somewhat hateful place, and this event truly brings out the hatred that sometimes happens for no reason. One could argue that the redditors were just having some fun, but the vulgar comments on reddit show otherwise. Ellen Pao even went as far as apologizing to users and employees, claiming “the mods [moderators] and the community have lost trust in me and in us, the administrators of reddit”.
As a fellow redditor, I’m somewhat upset with how the event was handled. I believe that the administrators should’ve been more strict on subreddits by shutting down the hate at the source.
source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/technology/ellen-pao-reddit-chief-executive-resignation.html