Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
I have had so many conversations or email exchanges with students in the last few years wherein I anger them by indicating that simply saying, “This is my opinion” does not preclude a connected statement from being dead wrong. It still baffles me that some feel those four words somehow give them carte blanche to…
Late last week, Gawker posted an item about a “C-suite executive” at Condé Nast, a married father of three (a married-to-a-woman father of three [I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have to clarify those things]), who made arrangements to spend a weekend with a gay male escort/porn star/conspiracy theorist. The porn star figured…
Reddit is a total fucking mess, but the new boss is laying down the law. The site’s CEO Steve Huffman opened a traditional Ask Me Anything session this afternoon with a fairly non-traditional type of announcement. Or at least it’s non-traditional for Reddit because CEO Steve is banning specific types of content. It all makes…
Reddit, one of the most popular sites on the internet and a social media platform that is almost entirely user-driven, has been in open revolt since June. Last week, that revolt culminated with the dismissal of CEO Ellen Pao. Reddit’s users thought they’d won victory for their values of free speech absolutism and resistance against the…
It’s looking more and more like Ellen Pao was, in some sense, set up to fail by her male board of directors. Her predecessor Yishan Wong says it. A top Reddit engineer said it right after quitting. It might sound conspiratorial if it weren’t about this particular site.http://gawker.com/top-reddit-eng… But this is Reddit. To the site’s…
Reddit’s chief engineer Bethanye Blount quit just days after interim CEO Ellen Pao left the high-profile online community. In an interview, Blount confirmed her departure after only two months at Reddit, having come there from Facebook. She said her move was not directly linked to Pao’s exit, but noted that she had lost confidence in…
On a sunny day last week, Shaun McBride (known on Snapchat as Shonduras) went to the supermarket. His hundreds of thousands of followers were alerted to the expedition through a Snapchat showing McBride holding a hastily drawn watermelon and a box of Cap’n Crunch. “What’s up, Snapchatters? Welcome to grocery shopping with Shonduras!” he said…
Reddit is all about free speech. Or maybe it’s not about free speech. Or maybe nobody knows what Reddit is about. Or maybe nobody knows what free speech is about. Reddit’s management doesn’t seem sure, and it’s threatening to tear the site apart. Yesterday, Reddit’s incoming CEO and original co-founder Steve Huffman said he’d be holding…
AYYYYYY LMAO How’s everyone doing? This is AWESOME! There’s something I neglected to tell you all this time (“executive privilege”, but hey I’m declassifying a lot of things these days). Back around the time of the /r/creepshots debacle, I wrote to /u/spez for advice. I had met him shortly after I had taken the job,…
In yet another announcement addressed to the wider Reddit community, new CEO and cofounder Steve Huffman, also known as /u/spez, will host an AMA on Thursday to present an institutionalized Content Policy for users. Huffman wrote: Neither Alexis nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where…