Should everybody just pick the money and run? Without knowing the details of the case and the reasoning of the people, it also could be possible that this woman was not looking for the money, but righteousness.
And no, I am not convinced (without knowing any details), that because the judgement was against her, that this is justness. (I have seen so many unjust judgments in my own country that where based on the fact, that one side had the better lawyers or better experts they hired)
Jurisdiction in human hands can always be an approximation of justness.
albertop, and I, are confused by your post, because you are defending her decision to refuse the 1 million with "righteousness" but must have missed the part of the article where it states she counter offered to settle for 2.7 million.
I am not a native speaker, so I might have been misunderstood ...??
No, you weren't. In the U.S. the primary way to get redress in these kinds of situations is a lawsuit with a concrete financial reward. And to some people, the seeking of a financial reward implies only the desire for the financial reward.
So by that logic: by virtue of seeking redress you're
only out for some cold hard cash. And what easier reason is there to decide to not believe a person's claims?
I get that people will probably disagree, but she just seems to not make very good business decisions. Maybe I'm way off base, but I've read a bunch of well qualified lawyers say that juries are just plain unpredictable, and that no competent lawyer can "guarantee" to win. In that light, even if the $1M settlement wasn't what you're asking for, I would think it paints a better picture of you than losing and having to pay the other side? Anyone care to explain something that I might be missing?
Her offering a high or higher number doesn't imply that she was only out for cash. Perhaps that amount was what she considered sufficient to punish KP appropriately.
And for the record: Consider this statement as me playing the race card.
But look: I wasn't on the jury, and I haven't reviewed the court records, and like everyone else here I'm playing armchair quarterback.
I'm not making any judgements on the case itself; I didn't follow it at all beyond blurbs I heard here on HN and on reddit. However, part of what I heard and just now validated is that $2.7 million is the exact amount that her husband owes in legal fees regarding that ponzi scheme he supposedly ran. If the numbers didn't match up exactly I might have a different reaction, but with that settlement amount it seems entirely pragmatic, not principled.
$2.7 million is the exact amount that her husband owes in legal
fees regarding that ponzi scheme he supposedly ran.
So, on one hand that sounds suspicious. On the other, I know how quickly the Internet (flash) mob is to pick up torches and pitchforks.
At the end of the day, what are we to do? Trust juries as the final arbiter, when we know that they're not infallible? Trust reddit - same, if not more? Has her husband been convicted of running a Ponzi scheme - or is it merely "alleged"? Did literally none of EP's lawyers think, "You know... that number is too obvious. We should fudge it a little."?
This logic would basically forbid any lawsuit, no matter how meritorious. Leaving aside what you think her odds are, this isn't how it works. You have to balance the odds of each outcome, not just the absolute best and worst cases.
The problem with the logic is you can basically plug any number in there and say they should have settled for that number too. If people always just settled becuase they might lose guess how much Big Corps will offer for settlements?
It's easy to say she should have settled in hindsight but if she had won big we'd be saying KP should have offered her more.
If you're going to credit an editor at the bottom, they should probably learn to edit something so simple that Word would've picked it up automatically.
It's as good as literally "any description"; science forum, racist feedback command center, gay hookup site, blog response community, 10th largest website in the solar system, click-bait blog-spam sales site, blue trombone weekly meetup organization, micro blogging community...
It's actually by definition a link aggregate website.
"Reddit is a large Internet forum with thousands of different communities."
It's short, points out the scale, and would be at least modestly comprehensible to the bottom 85% of people when it comes to technology understanding. They mostly know what a forum is, and they know what a community is, and they know what the Internet is.
Because someone suing for false claims is now at the head of Reddit, and she has the power to censor things she does not like (and actively uses it). I'd day it's related.
There've been some rather high-profile shadowbans (hellban/otherwise you're banned but don't know it) issued against people who did apparently did nothing but publicly state that Pao is a scam artist.
Given that those comments don't actually violate any of Reddit's stated rules, there aren't many other reasonable explanations.
Then again, I called every single one of them liars, publicly, by name, after the recent subreddit closing drama, and I'm not shadowbanned so, who knows.
I think you're unclear on the definition of slander.
To put it as charitably as possible, the facts that came out during the failed lawsuit (and later attempt to get 2.7M out of the company to get her to go away) do not paint Pao in a good light.
Calling her a scam artist is putting it mildly, IMO. Real gender discrimination cases are tainted by this kind of BS.
It is a mistake to assume Ellen Pao is the reason for /r/fatpeoplehate's removal, both /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots were banned before she worked at Reddit. Who's to say /r/fatpeoplehate wasn't also removed at a consensus by the staff?
Do you really think Ellen came in one day from a mountain on high and decreed "these subreddits shall be banned"? What planet are you from that you think a company is run that way?
> What planet are you from that you think a company is run that way?
Well, not a planet where I try to persuade people of my views by sarcastically asking what planet they're from. That is not an argument and it's devoid of intellectual content.
> Ellen
So you are on a first-name basis with her? Maybe you can tell us the inside story. Otherwise, calling someone by a first name alone is vulgar.
(downvote at will, rephrased to make it a bit more polite) As far as I could tell, people were relatively content with Reddit even when it had bad stuff, but people started getting noisy when the censorship started.
Comes down to a debate on censorship, which is admittedly quite divided. I don't condone hate speech, but its also sometimes tricky to separate hatred from a rational opinion about something. Ultimately you can't control the voices of people, they will find creative ways to broadcast their message for better or worse (as we saw when reddit shut down FPH). Censorship really only hits the beehive and makes the bad people more visible. As one example of this, I had no idea that FPH existed until Reddit shut it down.
No it wasn't, it was creating cesspits of hate when left to itself. Considering the amount of good communities on that website, the last thing I would want is for it to be overrun by such negativeness.
My searches on Reddit for entirely unrelated keywords have been increasingly polluted by distracting hateful crap that I do not want to see. Subreddits aren't independent/isolated enough that they can do whatever they want without it having an impact on the site as a whole. Reddit's looking for more growth. I'm sure that many potential users have been turned away from the site by similar experiences. If they manage to clean up the site without killing it, it could really help.
I can respect that - I never use Reddit's search function so I have been relatively unaware of that. I think the problem is that its almost impossible to police all of reddit - even if you shut down one thing (as we saw) 10 more pop up. Not sure there is a good solution, but the lesser of evils might be to just ignore the antagonists.
Given that /r/all currently has pretty much zero note of the crapshow from a couple days ago, I would think actually facing it and just bracing for a couple of days pays off a lot more than just ignoring it and letting it build up over time.
> Given that /r/all currently has pretty much zero note of the crapshow from a couple days ago, I would think actually facing it and just bracing for a couple of days pays off a lot more than just ignoring it and letting it build up over time.
> "it was creating cesspits of hate when left to itself."
'it' is humanity. If you can't handle looking at a true reflection of humanity then you're worse than the bigots, IMHO.
If we plug our ears and hum, "la la la" to the uncomfortable opinions held within pockets of society, we remove all possibility of discourse on the topic. No one should ever be so sure that they're right and others are wrong to take that leap. Even with racism, sexism, fat-hate, and so on.
Freedom of speech does not apply here. Reddit is not a forum owned by the public, it's a business. Reddit is within their rights to remove any content as they see fit.
Yeah, people complain once they realize walled gardens like Reddit start censoring whatever they choose only /after/ they get too big to stop. Same goes for closed ecosystems like the App Store and Google Play. Guess you should have read the fine print before giving your unquestioned allegiance to all these closed platforms.
I yearn for the days when the Internet was truly open. You can still launch any kind of site you want. But the truth is there is an ever shrinking number of players who now get to decide what content should or shouldn't be seen, and who should get referral traffic. The censorship I see is both ideological and business motivated. A relative few will control all of the information everyone gets to actually see, because no one will bother to look elsewhere. Sad really.
Hate speech is an easy target. But the censoring and anticompetitive practices have spread further than that.
Google, Apple, Facebook, can change their ToS to bring down potential competitors. They can remove your app for any reason, block access to their APIs, and ban you for posting content that leads to your own external page. It's happened plenty, and Reddit is no exception. These guys want you to live in their closed ecosystems where they control who the winners and losers are and what information is seen.
No, but 8chan reaches out to the real world and other forums and people end up receiving death threats.
Makes it REALLY HARD to support anonymity online, as it often seems like more people get horribly harassed or SWATed than we get benefits from anonymous whistleblowers and such.
Sounds like the same argument that the threat of terrorism makes it really hard to support civil liberties and personal privacy.
Same old rhetoric. Pretty scary that a growing number of people seem to share the same opinion.
I suppose you're right. I don't think I'd make the call to actually do it, but things have gotten so bad in the last year I'm just exasperated. And since law enforcement has been so apathetic/ineffective at dealing with even the most blatant cases that the negative externalities that would normally be there (arrests, social pressure, etc) can't seem to keep the dangerous behavior in check.
Don't know what else to do. Can't ignore it, and it's not getting better. Posting about how it's bad isn't useful/doesn't accomplish anything. Actively engaging has proven to very dangerous to people and doesn't seem to have helped.
Sometimes the call for censorship is a purposeful play to stamp out or control a group, sometimes it's just exasperation at a lack of any other idea of how to deal with a situation.
> I yearn for the days when the Internet was truly open.
When was that? Back in the early days, ISPs and hosts would shut down sites with very little provocation. I remember big outcries around sites being taken down by their ISP and/or having their domains seized by the FBI for file sharing and/or hate speech.
In fact, you could argue that the internet is more resistant to censorship now than it was back then. The ISPs in the early days had fewer customers and more competition, making them vulnerable to bad press. They pretty much had to act on any crank who complained about objectionable content hosted on their servers. ISPs today are bigger and have de facto monopolies (TWC and Comcast), so they don't respond so much to bad press. While that may be bad news for customer service, it's good news for the conspiracy theorist who wants to discuss which Rothschild is behind 9/11. Also, ISPs don't have to take sites down as often as they used to because most of them are hosted through third party companies like wordpress and google (blogspot).
True. I wasn't specifically talking about hate speech though. I was talking more about launching a site/app/business or spreading an idea. More often these happen entirely through a few closed channels (social networks, Reddit, app stores) and/or are completely reliant on a few closed channels to get any traction.
The Internet used to have more of a creative and community driven focus when people ran their own websites and found information through link networks. Now it's a continuous stream of information fed through a few closed platforms. If you don't submit yourself to the follies and whims of these platforms, you will never be seen.
I think that's most of what made Reddit so successful which is reminiscent of the old days-- its subreddits and link network of those communities.
While I wouldn't sign the petition and I don't care about her lawsuit or the recent subreddits that were banned, I'm turned off from reddit by their reaction to the fallout, particularly their fudging of the front page and /r/all and blocking comments mentioning an imgur alternative. I'm back to reading funnies from fark.com and now looking at voat.co. It's been a long time coming, longer than Pao has been CEO, and I'm not sure how many people realize that
The fudging of /r/all is from what I saw, the troll posts disappeared from the front page after about 4 hours but they were all there if you checked /r/all/top. After a few hours, they were all contained in /r/all/rising, every day they're still there. I actually didn't even know subreddits had been banned until I missed a touch on my phone and instead of hitting the reddit front page I hit /r/all on my phone, these are next to each other on the reddit is fun app on android.
The imgur alternative I mentioned is apparently slimgur.com. Here's a post with the story, this is where I read it from: http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/39nang/reddi.... As of now, it has over 4k points, a mod presumably sharing the details (comments with slimgur links have to be approved by moderators). It was at the top of /r/all/rising when I saw it a few days ago
Interesting. I noticed that the "sympathy" posts disappeared from my front page (mostly from /r/pics) within a few hours.
Did they rig things? That would make sense.
Frankly it's fine with me. I was worried I'd have to stay off Reddit for a few days until the juvenile hate-mongering died down. I've had to do it before.
I'm with the GP. Every time one of these things happen I get more and more uneasy about Reddit. This, the jailbait thing, Boston Bomber witch hunt. Every time 'the community' speaks up I end up disgusted and a little sick.
Most of the subs I'm in are too small for this garbage, so it often passes me by, thankfully. But then some event reminds me of the putrid filth just out of sight.
This balogna is getting posted on HN now? For the record she was appointed CEO before her trial (although after she filed suit) to replace Yishan Wong and people have been crying about censorship on Reddit long before she ever worked there. Also Alexis Ohanian has publicly talked about sexism in tech since before Pao worked at Reddit[0].
Why is there any award at all? I keep hearing that defending a case can bankrupt a person or company that doesn't have deep pockets even if they are successful. Why do these guys get reimbursed?
They only get reimbursed for some costs. In this case, chiefly witness fees. They probably paid hundreds of thousands in fees to lawyers which are not reimbursed.
Why does she have to pay the legal fees incurred by the defendants because she tried to extort money? Is that what you're asking? She has to pay because she lost, and they weren't doing anything wrong.
Correction: when you sue someone and lose, that does not necessarily mean you were extorting them. In fact, it almost necessarily precludes extortion, since extortion is the act of threatening to reveal a damaging secret unless you are conpensated. It also doesn't necessarily mean that the defendants did nothing wrong, as in the example of failed lawsuits against the NSA.
> Why do these guys [Kleiner Perkins] get reimbursed?
From the Reuters report, it appears that Kleiner made an offer of judgment under section 998 of the California Code of Civil Procedure, [1] which provides in part:
<blockquote>
(c) (1) If an offer made by a defendant is not accepted and the plaintiff fails to obtain a more favorable judgment or award, the plaintiff shall not recover his or her postoffer costs and shall pay the defendant's costs from the time of the offer.
In addition, in any action or proceeding other than an eminent domain action, the court or arbitrator, in its discretion, may require the plaintiff to pay a reasonable sum to cover costs of the services of expert witnesses, who are not regular employees of any party, actually incurred and reasonably necessary in either, or both, preparation for trial or arbitration, or during trial or arbitration, of the case by the defendant.
</blockquote>
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added)
"Costs," incidentally, means costs of court such as filing fees, court reporter charges, etc. [2] In this case, by statute (quoted above) the term also include expert witness fees. "Costs" usually does not include attorneys' fees.
I've never heard of a rule like that. Is it common in other states to have a similar 'catch' on making settlement offers?
What's the rational? I could see it as a way to try to prevent SLAPP type suits with quick settlements, but it seems like an awfully sharp double edged sword.
The rationale is specifically to encourage parties to try to settle out of court before tying up the justice system with a case. As is illustrated here, it makes the cost of saying "no" to a reasonable settlement both the loss of the settlement and the potential payment of your opponent's costs.
It's not a catch on making settlement offers; it's a catch on refusing to accept a settlement offer, and then failing to match or beat the offer at trial. The rationale is, you could have had a better deal if you'd accepted the other side's settlement offer, but you dragged the other side through a trial, so you have to pay their court costs.
This is also seen in Rule 68 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Some states have similar rules but also provide for attorneys' fees. See the annotations at http://www.commondraft.org/#SettlementIncentiveClause (self-cite).
I'm not sure that's accurate. I rarely see women get "heat" on reddit but once someone identifies as a women they seem to get far more comments, many even sexual. I'd say women get hit on versus catching heat.
Dear lord. Are you telling me you believe unsolicited sexual advances in response to any non-sexual thing one might post is desirable to women? News flash: it ain't. If you think that women aren't treated badly on Reddit, go to /R/shitredditsays. If you have a problem with the politics of that group, you need not read the comments. Just peruse the linked posts. A pattern quickly begins to emerge.
> To catch heat means roughly the same thing as to catch flak
Correct.
> In other words, to be complained about/insulted/whatever.
No, that's not what that means. To catch heat or flak is angering / upsetting others due to your actions then being on the receiving of said anger. It has nothing to do with one sided insults.
Not necessarily due to your actions, nor due to wrong actions. Pao is catching heat/flak over removing comments (which there is zero evidence of) or extortion and lying (which suing someone and losing is not) and over banning harassmemt/hate subs (which decision she announces and likely had a hand in, but was a right action).
Maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never seen the phrases "catching heat / catching flak" used when it's not in return of an action (I don't see any official definitions online either but as far as I can tell it's in return of some sort of action). What you're describing just sounds like typical insulting / disparagement.
I don't really know how much evidence is in any of those claims (I thought there was supposedly evidence, not zero, but I really don't care enough to bother looking anyway) as I never really wanted to talk or even fight about anything relating to Pao but I could see that changing the context for catching heat / flak if there is or isn't evidence.
> Are you telling me you believe unsolicited sexual advances in response to any non-sexual thing one might post is desirable to women?
Perhaps you didn't read my post clearly but I said nothing of the sort.
> If you think that women aren't treated badly on Reddit, go to /R/shitredditsays
I said the exact opposite; women are hit on pretty heavily in reddit. I don't see that as being treated well; it's obviously unwanted (at least in the vast, vast majority of the time).
I have no idea where you could get the idea that my post said or even implied anything but women being treated poorly on reddit...
You said that women don't catch heat, which to me meant you thought they were treated well. To catch heat (without a cause) is to be mistreated, and it seemed to me as if you were saying this was not the case. My apologies if I misunderstood you.
Please take a look at my original comment as I did not say that. Women catch heat all the time. All I said was, in my experience, I rarely see it when compared to all of the sexual harassment they receive.
> To catch heat (without a cause)
I haven't seen this phrase used without a "cause"; isn't that just an insult? Can you even "catch heat" without doing anything?
"I rarely see women get 'heat' on Reddit." -- You. I understand now that you were making a comparative statement, but at the time I believed you were making an absolute one.
> "I rarely see women get 'heat' on Reddit." -- You
I'm not sure why you're quoting that; it doesn't support your assertion. Rarely does not mean an absolute don't.
> I understand now that you were making a comparative statement, but at the time I believed you were making an absolute one.
Even if it was absolute I was certainly highlighting a problem with women being sexual harassed on Reddit which you still somehow took as me thinking it's desirable. Worst yet you never corrected your mistake within the editing window so my comment is being downvoted to hell and people probably think I'm supporting the sexual harassment of women.
It especially does not help the fact that her husband was at the helm of a massive scheme that defrauded untold amounts of public workers in regards to their pension
Admins also have censoring power. I can't find it, but there was a post by I think /u/karmanaut saying that the admins were filtering out Pao-related content in a way that didn't allow mods to re-approve it.
The summary I read basically had a few reasons. First that her lawsuit was rather manipulative, with things like refusing to cooperate with investigators after she reported misconduct. Or her classifying a voluntary relationship as coerced.
Additionally, folks on Reddit seem to believe that she coordinated with the previous CEO to take over the job so she'd have a CEO title going in to the lawsuit. Hence the sudden resignation of Yishan for no apparent reason.
There's other things, like refusing to negotiate salaries "because women do worse", which is really just an anti-employee action.
All this was before the banning of subreddits. I also don't find it credible that people dislike her because she's a woman. I don't know if the bits I read are true (they seem well presented, but many false things are), but if so, that's certainly enough reason regardless of gender.
The argument is that the moderation policies are selectively enforced in order to shape the prevailing ideologies expressed on the website.
Reddit's response is that it isn't "safe" and they want to make it that way. If you've been labeled as somebody who makes the site "unsafe" your actions are assumed to be those of an aggressor and an oppressor. If you're somebody trying to make the site "safe" even when you cross the line you're viewed as an oppressed person fighting back.
It's an intentionally uneven playing field and the people it's slanted against aren't happy about it.
There are certainly parts of Reddit where she isn't liked, definitely. But there are parts of Reddit where they don't like anyone who doesn't let them behave like spoiled, obnoxious children, so I wouldn't consider that indicative of anything.
Chairwoman Pao owes every penny. She was not discriminated against because she is a woman, she was discriminated against because she is a terrible employee, venture capitalist, and person. She sued Kleiner because she wanted to pay off the debt her scumbag husband owes for fraud.
HN has been prominently mentioned as an alternative to Reddit lately in a lot of the Pao-related threads ... I think we're going to be seeing a lot more Reddit behavior here, unfortunately.
Why it's relevant in my opinion? An old saying translates to something along the lines of "you are the sum of who support, live, work and play with", which I find tends to hold very true.
From what I've read, but haven't been able to look up sources (someone else might chip in here) - her demands for payment (settlements) have always equated to exactly or greater than the sums owed by both her and her husband to their respective creditors.
Edit: I believe she was discriminated against for not being a reliable/honest/good person to work with, not because of her gender.
2nd Edit: Having thought about it, I now agree with /u/obstinate below moreso - her husbands dealings have nothing to do with her. We only know of our partners doings from our partners themselves, so we can't truly be objective and tend to err on the side of trust and loyalty.
She felt as if she was discriminated against, so he likely supported her in her lawsuit. He's lost his business and a home, so of course she'll do what she can to support him.
I still reserve my personal opinion against both, as others will do from reading this against me. I'm leaving my original comment and edit for context.
"Based on the Trustee’s investigation, the answer to the question of why FILB had no meaningful assets at the time of the bankruptcy filing is principally that the Funds were victims of a fraud defined by the extensive use of wildly inflated valuations, the existence of fictitious assets under management (“AUM”) numbers, the improper payment of excessive fees, the misuse of investor money, and efforts wrongly to deny the Louisiana Pension Funds a key benefit of their investment agreement – mandatory redemption of their investment under certain circumstances. The Funds were also victims of an environment where self-interest all too often trumped fiduciary obligations."
I don't see anything in here about a conviction, and also nothing about Pao being the alleged perpetrator, and thus remain in a state of appalled disgust at what you have written.
But that just shows you don't understant the relevant word(s) and/or you haven't done any homework (like read even the cover page) on the trustee report.
This thread provides a nice crash course in the mentality and tactics that KiA and related manbaby trolls and hate groups are polluting reddit/the Internet with. Every act of moderation is Ellen Pao's fault, here's a bunch of unsubstantiated FUD about how everyone who got moderated was innocent and we'll constantly repeat these peripheral allegations about her husband. It's incredibly transparent and shameless.
"Downvote them all, it's the only way to be sure." - Susan B Anthony
My big question is: are we ever going to get past this crap? Or is this the enlightened future of discourse. I guess I'm just getting old -- the gish gallop isn't new, but this form feels more terrible and insidious.
The sad statement about the level of discourse is that you apparently care about it but still think granparent comment qualifies. It even breaks the first two rules of HN commenting guidelines: be civil, don't call people names.
Maybe you only speak of the future of discourse because it's a deep sounding insult, but if you actually care I encourage you to read this essay and reconsider your acceptance of namecalling.
I have read this essay a number of times. While I agree it is great, it has an assumption of good faith on the part of the counterparty that I find unsubstantiated in terms of sexists, including many of the anti-Pao folks in this thread. If your discourse consists mostly of repeating unsubstantiated rumors or outright falsehoods, or are otherwise laced with misogyny, like the induhviduals who have made comments about her husband, I feel there's a point at which it is fine for me to give up on you. At that point, the best way to raise the level of discourse is to remove the bad actors from the conversation.
The reason to set a higher bar is this: in a heated debate where core beliefs are being challenged there will always a temptation to decide you're dealing with an idiot or a monster even when you aren't.
If you don't mind me asking, perhaps you could give a reason why you feel this isn't always the optimal approach?
I can certainly understand that it's not exactly the most pleasant thing to do at times, but I feel as though it's an ideal where the side effects of striving for it are beneficial. It would mean a lot of me to hear your take on it.
Of course I do not mind. I believe ostracization and marginalization have historically been more effective for this type of objectionable opinion. The main differentiating factor is that misogyny is not rooted in reason. Thus, reason is an ineffective tool for attacking it, especially on the internet.
I'm not saying misogyny is rooted in reason, I'm saying the social justice movement has a habit of misclassifying opposing viewpoints as misogyny in order to dismiss them.
Do you have any reason to believe that name-calling is the optimal way to "remove the bad actors from the conversation"? In my experience, its only likely outcome is the destruction of potentially healthy debate.
There is nothing potentially healthy about the kind of smear campaign happening in this thread. If we saw no discussion of her husband, the posts that she did not actually remove, or claims that she extorted kp or lied about things that happened, then maybe.
It's reasonable to say his personal life should be left out but in your anger you've moved that line to a point where it prevents important information from entering the discussion.
Disappointing that you view all criticisms against Ellen Pao as inherently sexist. I think if anything people would be just as critical of her if she was a guy. Who appoints a lawyer to run Reddit?
The long Vanity Fair article from 2013 on Pao and Fletcher that someone else linked to is actually really interesting, but the comments that included the link were inflammatory and derailed discussion, so I'm guessing many people who would have enjoyed the Vanity Fair article skipped it.
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