Jesse Jackson had an AMA that did not go very well. Several of the most upvoted questions were simply disrespectful. The Reverend's answers were mostly boilerplate and often unresponsive to the question. The AMA seems to have been part of some PR rollout -- Mother Jones had an article three days ago about Jackson taking on Silicon Valley. The event seems to have failed the rollout's objectives.
Not a great moment for anyone: The AMA didn't always feature the Reddit community at its best, but the Reverend didn't show at all well under the spotlight of Radical Transparency.
Given all that, the timing and speed of the admin's firing hardly seems coincidental. Reddit seems to have blown up a number of ongoing events, and upset an important chunk of its community, which hardly suggests that her firing relates to some long-term issue.
I can see why Reddit might feel the event wasn't handled well.
But it is also very plausible that Jackson and his camp were deeply embarrassed, and insisted that someone be punished for that. So plausible, in fact, that I think Reddit really should give some account that demonstrates that this is _not_ what happened -- or admit that it did.
It is very surprising that this whole thing hasn't gotten more coverage in the tech press.
If you are a public figure, it is your (really, your manager's or agent's) responsibility to manage your image. An important part of that is deciding which engagements are good opportunities for you and which are not. It is also your own responsibility to be prepared for an engagement to go poorly -- unexpected/negative questions, hecklers, etc -- and have a plan in place for how to respond to that. If you're not willing or able to do these things, you should decline invitations like this and live privately. Or at the very least, don't complain when you don't get the result you were hoping for when you accepted.
I think it's pretty forseeable that an AMA would likely result in a lot of uncomfortable questions for a highly controversial figure like Rev. Jackson. That can be an opportunity, or it can be a disaster. It does not seem that he was properly prepared for it either way. That's not Reddit's fault nor Chooter's; it's his.
All that said, it's clear that Reddit is not a well-managed company, and this appears to have gotten worse since they hired Ellen Pao. So it's certainly possible that the people calling the shots over there don't get it, or are trying to reimagine Reddit as something it is not. If that's so, then your theory is entirely plausible. But it still doesn't explain the lack of communication or any semblance of a backup plan. If you're employing someone who has no alternate, and you have no plan in place to transfer that person's duties, the only reason to fire that person on the spot is that they're committing felonies directly related to the company or its business. Anything else -- and I do mean anything else; I don't care if they took a giant shit right on your desk -- can wait 24 business hours while you get some kind of continuity plan in place. As a manager, if you can't control your own anger or impetuousness well enough to avoid torpedoing your own business out of spite, you don't belong in your role. Ellen Pao, we're looking at you.
Despite your own image / plans being your own responsibility, it's not like there aren't people with public profiles (celebs, politicians, etc) out there who are vindictive over failed PR events.
I think I have a plausible explanation (please beware, this is 100% conjecture).
Hypothesis 1: Jackson's AMA went badly, he/his team was specifically pissed at Victoria and demanded consequences, threatening a public campaign against reddit.
Hypothesis 2: Conde Nast is not happy about the public perception of reddit as the biggest blob of hate on the Internet. So they might have given them a "one more headline news scandal" ultimatum.
In that situation, there are no winners, only losers, there is nothing to gain and there isn't even a 100% guilty party.
>Jackson's AMA went badly, he/his team was specifically pissed at Victoria and demanded consequences, threatening a public campaign against reddit.
This is a very plausible conjecture, especially in view of admins' comments in wake of the fatpeoplehate ban explicitly permitting racist anti-black subreddits to continue to operate. This could have become an existential threat to reddit. In view of that, and their apparent weathering of past anti-user controversies, a user revolt would seem like the lesser evil from a short-sighted perspective.
I don't think the questions were overly disrespectful. It's an Ask Me Anything, not an Ask Me Respectful Things. And it's not the first time someone has called him a shakedown artist or mentioned his out-of-wedlock child.
>Mr. Jackson, You are an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain. You've personally set back race relations year after year and continue to do more harm than good. Extorting money from companies to line your pockets and threatening to bus in protestors and create a fake racial controversy if they don’t agree to pay you off is NOT civil rights activism. My question is simple; how is your relationship with the illegitimate child you fathered in 1998 while cheating on your wife? Bonus question: How much money have you extorted from various people and companies over the years of practicing your shakedown scheme? Do you think Al Capone would be jealous of your business model if he were still alive?
That is the "best" question according to Reddit's sorting algorithm. I think that easily qualifies as "overly disrespectful".
It one thing to ask tough questions. It is another to call a man an immoral race baiter, say he set back his cause years, call him an extortionist, chastise him for an affair, and then insinuate he is worse than one of the most notorious criminals in US history all within a single paragraph. That isn't a question, it is a personal attack.
I sadly don't think it is surprising that a comment like that is posted. But it is a black eye on the Reddit community that it was upvoted more than any other question in the AMA.
The question was on point though. It was a tough question and it hurt, but the guy isn't just "some guy" he goes on TV almost every night to push his political agenda. He was called out for being a hypocrite and people in his position deserve to be called out for being hypocritical, deceitful, and manipulative.
None of this is anything new though, it's widely accepted that Jackson is a demagogue.
It's equivalent to what happens to someone like E.L. James when she does a Twitter Q&A. Or when Anne Coulter does a Q&A on Reddit.
There was no scenario under which Jessie Jackson was going to get anything but slammed (in semi-respectful and completely disrespectful ways). His profile is very, very polarizing to say the least.
Ultimately you either have a completely open community, or a tightly controlled community. Given a bit of time, there can be no middle ground.
The phrasing is awful, agreed. But as GP pointed out, it is "ask me anything." further, each of the points raised are the kinds of thing I would expect to be addressed directly in a transparent interview format. Surely that user could have found a more respectful way to phrase it, but asking questions about someone's right to a morally superior attitude when that is central to their PR? Not that out of line.
While I agree it is disrespectful, clearly there are plenty of people who don't respect him. If that question causes you to melt down and get someone fired then you're not worthy of respect.
I'm pretty certain AMA disasters do not qualify as fireable. And firing the facilitator with a history of good AMAs for that reason is hardly an appropriate remedy even if that is so.
'Have you felt regretful for rushing to judgement after condemning the "perpetrators" of the Duke lacrosse rape scandal during 2006-07?'
'No, the pattern is consistent. And we never want injustice to occur. But the pattern is fairly obvious, and a very obvious pattern that must be ended.'
The Reverend isn't interested in fairness to individuals, he's interested in "patterns". If he feels himself subjected to a pattern he feels unfair, well, fairness to any individual is less important than ending that pattern.
The Reverend is not the guy you'd want arguing with Yahweh to spare Sodom and Gomorrah lest He unjustly punish the innocent with the guilty.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm not sure I see how that relates to the departure of a Reddit employee facilitating that AMA. He answered the question, right? Whether the answer is terrible maybe impacts what you think of him, but not what you think of the person making the AMA happen (either as a person or as an employee), right?
Or did he not actually answer the question, and did someone else answer in his place? Or is there more going on, like he regretted that answer?
He probably refretted the answer, because it's like he didn't even read the question before answering with some boilerplate answer, which is probably why the question got rated so high after the answer.
I do. But I was jailed in 1960. For trying to use a public library. And that caused more good than harm. I marched to end segregation. The day Dr. King spoke on Washington, in 1963, I was there for that speech. That day, from Texas to Florida, you couldn't use a single public toilet. We could not buy ice cream at Howard Johnson's, or stay in Holiday Inns. We fought to bring those barriers down. And because those walls are down, all the new interstate construction across the South - the new bridges and ports, and seaports - that's progress. You couldn't have teams behind the Cotton Curtain. You couldn't have had Olympics in Atlanta behind the Cotton Curtain. You couldn't have Toyota, and Michelin, behind the Cotton Curtain, so we pulled those walls down.
So our work has been beneficial. And it seems to me that people who benefit from that work ascribe it to the wrong reasons.
When the laws change to make the South more civil, that brought in more investment. So we've made America better.
All these changes have come from our work. Our work has bene good for the South, and good for America.
My goal is to expand our consciousness, to create as big a tent as possible, as we fight for justice and world peace. I was able to bring Americans home from jail, from prison, and gaining those freedom of those Americans was the highest and best use of my talents and time.
Replying to myself to include a relevant point (reported by Digg, of all people): /u/kickme444, a Reddit employee and founder of RedditGifts, was also let go. RedditGifts was the other weird subreddit that had paid staff at corporate.
It is a demonstration that the Reverend doesn't much care about fairness to individuals, and so would not feel qualms about insisting someone be fired because he was embarrassed.
OK, and why would Reddit go along with that? IAmA was one of the most monetizable parts of Reddit, and it needed a full-time staff member to work. The site was already vaguely unhappy with the admins (though maybe those folks were leaving). Jesse Jackson's personal support doesn't mean much to Reddit, I'm pretty sure. Even if it made sense for him to want Victoria fired, which I'm not sure it does, and even if nobody at Reddit felt qualms about firing their coworker, it still makes no business sense why this was the right move for Reddit.
Quoting the International Business Times: "The AMA in question, which took place just two days before Taylor's firing was revealed, was widely regarded to be nothing short of a disaster. When the top question on the AMA calls the person answering questions 'an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain', you know you are in trouble. [...] However the suggestion that this was the reason for Taylor's firing does seem tenuous at best, and outright ridiculous in reality." There are some more plausible reasons in that story. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reddit-revolt-why-was-popular-direc...
"[T]he suggestion that this was the reason for Taylor's firing does seem tenuous at best, and outright ridiculous in reality." That is an assertion, and one without any argument or evidence. The other two theories mentioned by the article (anti-relocation, anti-commercialization) aren't consistent with such an abrupt and poorly handled firing.
Now why would Reddit fire Victoria over the AMA? There are many _possible_ reasons. Here are some speculations.
One, no company wants to be the target of Reverend Jackson or his supporters complaining that they treated him in a disrespectful or racist fashion. Look at how some of the various tech diversity controversies have played out, and how quickly. Reddit may well have worried that _not_ firing Victoria could have put them in a "Reddit is racist" cross-hairs that could quickly have spun out of control. Especially given how much of exactly that sort of material is floating around on various subreddits. Given how those controversies can roll, reasoning like this may even have been in some sense correct. Lose the whole company in a Twitter storm? Or fire a popular employee and irritate a bunch of mods?
Two, CEO Pao is on record talking about the importance of diversity at Reddit. It may very well be that she felt the AMA was cross-wise her own values, and those she wants to promote at Reddit.
Three, CEO Pao may also regard the Reverend and his supporters as important allies for purposes of her own, apart from her role as Reddit's CEO. She's certainly out there as interested in diversity issues, and admired by many for that. It isn't hard to imagine that she would be concerned about that image.
Four, others at Reddit may have felt the AMA didn't represent their values. Silicon Valley is notoriously progressive, and when dealing with political questions people often don't think straight. The conflict between "AMAs can be rough" and "Reverend Jackson deserves more respect than that" creates cognitive dissonance. That makes decision-making very hard. Add in some pressure from Jackson or his people -- whom many in Silicon Valley _want_ to perceive as reasonable and intelligent folks, and exposed to a lot of unreasonable criticism -- and good choices start to get difficult.
We don't _know_ anything, of course. The basic point is, the Jackson AMA created a _political_ situation for Reddit. Political decision-making is already hard, and the thinking about it easily confused. Reddit may have made a political choice driven by business concerns. Or it may have made political choices based on its employees personal agendas or outlooks.
Or, the timing of the firing and the AMA were completely coincidental.
Even if you grant one through four, the role of AMA facilitator is incredibly monetarily important for Reddit, and also incredibly politically important for Reddit as a platform. Victoria was their one paid control of AMA. The mods (as we saw) are volunteers and answer to nobody. Reddit's management isn't dumb, they know that.
(Speculation one also seems somewhat unlikely given that, for instance, /r/coontown is still around. They'd be an obvious scapegoat if you wanted to curry favor with Jackson or with the Twitter folks who were already saying that Reddit was racist. And they're far less valuable to Reddit than an employee was.)
What they could have done, if they really wanted, was to trump up some charges against the AMA mods (perhaps for not moderating that AMA well) and replace some or all of the mod team. That would have placated Jackson, or Twitter, or Pao's self-image, or whomever, while cementing control of AMA in the future. Reddit continued to have an employee involved in running AMAs, and she could have been pressured into keeping AMAs reflect the message Reddit wants to send.
So even if someone (Jackson, Pao, someone else at Reddit) felt like Something Needed To Be Done in response to that AMA, it's far from obvious that firing someone would have been a response that occurred to them. What we're assuming here is not just poor decision-making blinded by ideology / political exigency / whatever, but poor decision-making in the face of other, obvious, obviously better options. That's what makes it so hard to believe.
We know that Reddit already implemented a move-or-get-fired policy. We know that Reddit is bad at handling employee termination (and lots of companies are, to be fair). We know that, fairly recently, Reddit terminated an employee for not moving, and handled it very abruptly, too, without contacting the subreddit they were assigned to work with. "Management decided to fire the employee for standard company-politics reasons, and did a bad job of it" seems perfectly within reason.
Or, you've generated Scenario Five: Reddit wanted to remove a mod in connection with the Jackson AMA, Victoria refused to cooperate, they fired her instead.
But I would definitely agree that what looks like conspiracy generally turns out to be stupidity.
My heart goes out to the athletes ruined by the scandal. There is another point of view. Something us Internet commenters don't often realize. Do you have any black friends who was at Duke during that time? Ask them to describe it.
That's a good ask. I wasn't trying to be snarky. I really don't understand it that well and I don't think it means as much coming from an Asian person. And honestly I'm not comfortable arguing about it on a public forum.
Well, I didn't take it for being snarky. I also don't want to engage in any kind of argument, I just want to hear about the point you were trying to make. You even said it was "something us Internet commenters don't often realize", so this would be a great forum to share the viewpoint, since it is almost by definition filled with internetters
(Translation for the reddit-impaired: Woody Harrelson came to IAMA trying to do publicity for his movie Rampart. His cluelessness and apparent entitlement nearly blotted out the sun.)
> Jesse Jackson had an AMA that did not go very well. Several of the most upvoted questions were simply disrespectful.
I think anyone could have seen that coming. Anonymous accounts with community voting and an API to boot? This is only asking for trouble - especially if the AMA was done by an individual who wasn't familiar with the personality of the community or internet etiquette in general. Assuming every other AMA was respectful/successful - they were just playing a game of russian roulette.
I'm surprised that celebrities even want to go on reddit - don't get wrong I love the idea of an exchange of comments between the common person and famous people but I certainly wouldn't want to do it on an anonymous posting site.
Edit: To the downvoters - I should point out that assuming that reddit has automated systems in place to detect fraudulent voting - someone with a botnet could easily defeat it. It's easy to detect when the same guy is upvotting posts from the same IP or same block of IPs - how do you detect that when the voting are coming from all over the world? It doesn't even have to be a botnet - how do you know that the android/ios game you just downloaded isn't making web service calls in the background to a site like reddit? If I was a bad guy - I would definitely outsource development of some useful app or game and embed my upvoting code into that once it becomes popular.
> I'm surprised that celebrities even want to go on reddit
Some celebrities seem to be thriving on reddit. I've seen Arnold Schwarzneggar engage users on /r/fitness, and he has posted several videos (that tank one was one I saw recently) along with doing PR for his Terminator movie.
Whoever is helping him along seems to be doing a great job.
> I'm surprised that celebrities even want to go on reddit
Celebrity AMAs more often than not go really really well, even for controversial figures like Obama.
Reddit just has a tendency to lash out at a) people who are obviously just using the site for PR (the Rampart AMA) and b) terrible people (Jesse Jackson) tend to go bad because people simply don't like them in general.
Yeah, it's surprising there isn't any tools for vetting questions, and perhaps requiring accounts to have a certain age or karma... then again it kinda goes against the openness of reddit, which is nice and all but tends to break down when a site gets large enough
Questions get voted up or down. Either Reddit has a problem with being gamed and trolls can successfully get their questions upvoted, or that's what the audience wanted.
Reddit admin's recent decisions have painted an impression that they think that administrative actions are favors to hand out to their personal social group. Like, it's the explanation that makes sense both for this as well as the banning of /r/neofag.
I'd be surprised if it was about that (at least only) and not more about reddit wanting to bring AMA's back to a team at their SF office rather than NY... but your guess is as good as mine
Not a great moment for anyone: The AMA didn't always feature the Reddit community at its best, but the Reverend didn't show at all well under the spotlight of Radical Transparency.
Given all that, the timing and speed of the admin's firing hardly seems coincidental. Reddit seems to have blown up a number of ongoing events, and upset an important chunk of its community, which hardly suggests that her firing relates to some long-term issue.
I can see why Reddit might feel the event wasn't handled well.
But it is also very plausible that Jackson and his camp were deeply embarrassed, and insisted that someone be punished for that. So plausible, in fact, that I think Reddit really should give some account that demonstrates that this is _not_ what happened -- or admit that it did.
It is very surprising that this whole thing hasn't gotten more coverage in the tech press.