In the aftermath of Ellen Pao’s “mutual decision” to step down as interim CEO of reddit, Feminist Frequency co-founder Anita Sarkeesian has waded in on the matter.
Taking to Twitter on July 14, Sarkeesian shared an article penned by The Daily Beast‘s Arthur Chu, entitled Reddit’s Terrorists Have Won: Ellen Pao and the Failure to Rebrand Web 2.0.
The Daily Beast Article Condemns an Entire Community
Let’s just take a brief look at the contentions put forward in The Daily Beast article.
Chu opens his piece with the following opinion: “Internet communities like Reddit have always been toxic environments that survive on the backs on unpaid labor…” He then goes on to suggest that Pao’s downfall was the work of Internet trolls and disgruntled AMA-lovers. Quite rightly, he articulates his disgust at some of the behavior demonstrated by a small minority of redditors, including the distasteful act of photoshopping Pao’s head into pornographic images.
There is one thing Chu doesn’t appear to question, however, which is “Was Pao any good at her job?”
Perhaps a bonus question is in order? Is it rational to assume that the 200,000+ people who added their signatures to the recent Change.org petition were merely a bunch of racists and misogynists?
Chu, as so many like him, has done the very thing he probably loathes and detests. By saying things like, “Internet Communities like Reddit have always been toxic environments,” or “Reddit has gotten a reputation for being attractive to creepy, obsessive people for whom the inherently toxic environment is a reasonable price to pay to be around people like them,” he is prejudicially labeling the entire community, consciously or otherwise. Would we label a race or gender in the same way, or the LGBT community? No, we wouldn’t.
In any event, if Chu truly understood reddit, he would realize that these toxic communities are in the minority, and are generally unpopular spaces.
I will preface my next remarks - as now seems customary for every criticism of Pao - with the following: There’s no justification for the deplorable actions of some of reddit’s more “toxic” quarters, including the inexcusable remarks about her gender and race.
However, Chu must be reminded that Pao was unpopular for good reason. She made a number of missteps that, ultimately, cost her the role of interim CEO. While she may, or may not, have played a direct role in the dismissal of AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor, she also got several other things wrong.
She had enacted questionable censorship measures; entire comment threads were disappearing in puffs of smoke; long-promised mod tools remained in limbo; and admin members were failing to adequately communicate their ideas and intentions to the community. Ultimately, this led to much of the site going dark in protest, and a substantial number of users were fleeing to Voat. If you were a board member witnessing this spectacle, what would be your response?
Of course, this isn’t solely Pao’s fault. The reddit board - which I just mentioned - must take some responsibility, as should the admin team, as a collective entity.
Indeed, in the aftermath of Pao’s dramatic departure, new evidence has come to light that implicates the board members’ role in enacting reddit’s new censorship measures - something that has yet to be reversed. Similarly, as pointed out by Chu, Executive Chairman Alex Ohanian appears to have been involved in the decision to give Victoria Taylor the boot.
This, of course, raises questions over the mea culpa of the other administrators. But, even armed with this new information, does this make Pao any more or less effective at her job? She still failed to challenge the status quo, and do what was right for the community. Worse still, she didn’t want to introduce these changes - clearly understanding how unpopular they would be - but pushed forward with them anyway.
Sarkeesian on Reddit’s Community
While Anita Sarkeesian has not made any direct comment on Pao, or her treatment as interim reddit CEO, she appears to have fallen into the same trap as Chu. She talks about “large swaths” of reddit serving as “… ideological incubators for vile racism and misogyny which then bleed over into the rest of the Internet.”
The problem with this argument is that it’s not supported by any cold, hard facts. While I certainly do not profess to be well-versed in reddit culture, most of the content I have witnessed is inanity (of the most entertaining kind), fun and cuteness. I’ve seen informative ELI5 posts, interesting AMA sessions and posts offering all manner of advice.
I’ve never seen a racist or sexist post hit the site’s front page - most likely because that type of content gets heavily downvoted - and it takes some searching to upturn some of the more unsavory subreddits.
I see the good of reddit time after time, and very rarely encounter the bad. If you’re seeing more of reddit’s “bad side,” then maybe you’re actively looking for it.
Indeed, for the mainstream media and prominent newspaper outlets, an old adage rings true: “bad news is good news.” This is often what the media focuses on, because it generates a huge amount of traffic and revenue.
With Sarkeesian, the phenomenon is much the same.
It’s hard to dispute the claim that Sarkeesian’s raison d’être lies in proving that gender inequality is ubiquitous and pervasive. She talks about the “patriarchy” helping to promote a framework of oppression, and explains how badly women are treated in society as a whole. If this supposed framework didn’t exist, neither would Feminist Frequency. This creates a potential “self-interest problem,” where the Feminist Frequency program is dependent upon this framework being true to justify its continuation.
So, one must question this dependency. Does Sarkeesian genuinely see reddit as a place for organizing “cyber mobs” and “collectivized hate” - an experience that contrasts, starkly, with my own - or does she need these places to be labeled as such to rationalize the legitimacy of her career.
While my reddit experiences probably seem anecdotal, so are Sarkeesian’s tweets, all of which are conspicuously devoid of fact. Until we know the facts, however, it’s dangerous to pass assumption off as gospel truth; it’s also unfair to label an entire community, or “large swaths” of it, as being steeped in racism, sexism, or any of the other -isms.
Much like society, reddit is a free and open platform for people to express themselves. Unfortunately, this means we will sometimes encounter some bad apples. But, when you encounter a bad apple, it’s perhaps irrational to throw away the entire bushel.