In July, popular website Reddit found itself suddenly mired in unprecedented controversy. When the dust settled, controversial CEO Ellen Pao resigned and those following the fiasco were left with more questions than answers. Pao’s stated reason for her departure was that the Reddit board was demanding a higher growth rate than she felt comfortable promising. Mundane sure, but many felt that given recent events at the company, the truth was likely murkier.

1. 100 | GlobeAsia August 2015
Technology
I
n July, popular website Reddit found
itself suddenly mired in unprecedented
controversy. When the dust settled,
controversial CEO Ellen Pao resigned and
those following the fiasco were left with more
questions than answers. Pao’s stated reason for
her departure was that the Reddit board was
demanding a higher growth rate than she felt
comfortable promising. Mundane sure, but many
felt that given recent events at the company, the
truth was likely murkier.
The trouble for Reddit began when
management decided to let a popular employee
named Victoria Taylor go. Taylor was well-liked
among Redditors and the face of its more high-
profile boards including AMA (ask me anything).
Her firing prompted an almost instant outcry.
Since Taylor acted as a liaison officer
between Reddit and their unpaid volunteers, the
community felt betrayed and many pre-planned
events had to be suddenly cancelled. Furious
Redditors focused in on CEO Ellen Pao and went
for her with a vengeance. Redditors were in full
revolt with almost 1400 subreddits set to private
in a show of solidarity with Taylor.
The uprising effectively crippled the site and
a Change.org petition calling for Pao’s ouster
gathered steam and was covered extensively by
the media. A few days later Pao was out.
When President John F. Kennedy was shot in
1963, his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald,
denied responsibility. Oswald’s last recorded
words were reportedly “I’m just a patsy.” While
the US government quickly ruled him solely
responsible, a Gallup poll on the 50th anniversary
of the assassination found that 61% of Americans
believe the president was killed in a conspiracy.
What does this have to do with Reddit? Perhaps
more than you’d imagine.
The public loves a mystery but when it came
to Pao, people were all too comfortable with the
narrative they were fed. Redditors viewed Pao
How Ellen Pao became Reddit’s
Lee Harvey Oswald
COURTESYOFWIKIPEDIA.ORG
as a cold assassin terminating Taylor for reasons
unknown. In a surprising turnaround, however,
it took just four days for public opinion to turn as
the facts started to trickle out. It seems clear Pao
was just a patsy.
Conspiracy theory
It now appears that Alexis Ohanian, co-founder
of Reddit, was the one who made the decision
to let Taylor go and not Ellen Pao. Ohanian, it
appears, then proceeded to maintain absolute
radio silence while Pao took all the heat from
the community. Pao, for her part, bore her cross
with dignity and stepped down when she felt she
couldn’t meet expectations.
But was Pao set-up? As insiders began to spill
the beans, tantalizing clues emerged that maybe
there was more to this than first meets the eye.
The writing was on the wall for Pao long before
Taylor was fired.
Something strange about the vitriol directed
at Pao was that it seemed very efficient and
organized and that’s because it was. The
trouble for Pao first began months ago when
she introduced a new anti-harassment policy
banning certain subreddits including “Fat People
Hate” and some others with racist/misogynistic
content. The bans were arguably good policy
but ran afoul of those that felt reddit should be a
bastion of free speech.
More worrying perhaps was the vicious racist
hatred that underpinned the movement to oust
the CEO. It’s clear in hindsight that the crowd
energized behind the revolt were actually fueled
by a small minority of displaced angry trolls
who had suddenly found no place to spew their
hate and so focused in on Pao. It’s fair to say that
many who jumped on the bandwagon calling for
her ouster may have had no idea just where that
bandwagon had been.
News outlets meanwhile also focused on
Taylor’s firing as a root cause. Few traced the

2. 101
hate all the way back to its origins. In actuality
a group of antisocial characters aligned against
Pao rebranded their efforts at the last moment,
successfully piggy-backing off sympathy for
Taylor, and leveraged it for their own aims. The
movement was hijacked.
Former CEO Yishan Wong opened up recently
revealing it was actually him who formalized
the free speech policy, and that the policy was in
no way intrinsic to Reddit. In fact, he explained
that Pao’s view was more in keeping with the
founders’ intent for Reddit. Wong made the
following comment:
“...when I read the occasional posting here
where people say ‘the founders of Reddit intended
this to be a place for free speech.’ Human minds love
originalism, e.g. ‘we’re in trouble, so surely if we go
back to the original intentions, we can make things
good again.’ Sorry to tell you guys but NO, that
wasn’t their intention at all ever...”
Wong went on to explain that he learned
from Reddit founder Steve Huffman that
Huffman routinely shut down anything on the
site he viewed as hate speech. The former CEO
took responsibility for straying from the original
practice in favor of free unhindered speech. A
move he now sees as a mistake.
In sum of course this means that hate
directed towards Pao for removing those forums
is misplaced because Reddit leadership past and
present all now share the view that such controls
were necessary. Further, we now know that
Taylor’s firing was also likely Ohanian’s doing.
Calling for Pao’s head was just a case of certain
people finally learning what Reddit was about
(or not about: namely, hate speech) and not liking
what they learnt.
Ah but they can, and are. Gawker and Fast
Company were the first major outlets to peel
back the first layer and question whether there
was something under the surface. Pavithra
Mohan of Fast Company wrote an incisive article
titled “Ellen Pao, part of a ‘long con’ at Reddit?”
wherein Mohan referred to a strange post first
discovered by Gawker on Reddit wherein Wong
appeared to half jokingly allege a conspiracy
being behind it all.
Jason Fernandes
Tech commentator and the founder of SmartKlock.

3. Technology
102 | GlobeAsia August 2015
against her previous employer, Kleiner Perkins.
Pao was a junior partner at the firm and alleged
that she was coerced into an affair with a co-
worker, and then retaliated against when she tried
to break it off. Pao’s suit said that the company
later retaliated against her by dismissing her
when she reported the incident. The jury decided
in favor of Kleiner Perkins however, and Pao’s
lawsuit was dismissed on all counts.
The suit made a name for her as a champion
of women’s rights in a man’s industry and also a
target. Pao introduced several policies at Reddit
aimed to even the playing field between men and
women who worked at Reddit and this, coupled
with the failed lawsuit against her employers,
unfortunately made her an excellent target for
the misogynist racists on Reddit who were upset
at the closure of their subreddits.
Not only was Pao a woman and Asian, but
she was already under immense professional and
personal stress, having just lost what was likely
an emotionally draining lawsuit.
No shortage of suspects
Just exactly what the nail was that finally did
her in we may never know. Alexis Ohanian’s
deafening silence, which was sustained until after
Ellen Pao’s dismissal, didn’t help. That was at best
ungallant, if not downright malicious. Redditors
celebrating Pao’s exit are making a mistake: As
Wong views it, she may have been the only one
actually trying to save the company.
The few bad seeds that had infected Reddit
were making it an inferior and distracting
experience for everybody else. To encourage
those who just wanted to enjoy and contribute
to Reddit in a positive manner, the new policies
were necessary and the offensive boards would
have had to go regardless. Pao was merely a
scapegoat.
Even if one discounts Wong’s perhaps
outrageous theory, there was a sustained effort
at her removal that was either coordinated or
Pao had the worse run of luck in history and
everything was just a series of very unfortunate
events. We may never know the truth, and
its unlikely Pao’s ouster will ever capture the
imagination of the internet generation the way
the Kennedy assassination did so many years ago.
If I were Ellen Pao though, I wouldn’t be buying
lottery tickets anytime soon.
According to Wong’s post (which he ended
“JUST KIDDING. There’s no way that could
happen.), the root cause of the tumult at Reddit
dates back to 2006 when the company was
purchased by magazine publisher Conde Nast.
As Wong puts it, “the site was unmanaged and
under-resourced under the old-media giant who
simply didn’t understand it and could never
realize its full potential.”
Wong’s post goes on to suggest that realizing
their error, the founders engineered a coup (in
collusion with board member Sam Altman) with
the aim of wresting control of the site from Conde
Nast. This would be achieved by engineering
a series of leadership crises, each one slowly
diluting Conde Nast’s share. The plan would
culminate in the reintroduction of the founders
on the board and in the CEO position, meanwhile
Conde Nast would eventually be relegated to
minority shareholder status.
Altman had a witty if sarcastic reply to
Wong’s post: “Cool story bro. Except I could never
have predicted the part where you resigned on
the spot :) Other than that, child’s play for me.
Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your
service as CEO.”- Ouch!
Ellen Pao was not silent. In response to a
poster who mused whether Altman had been
kidding, Pao replied “How is this funny? /s” - Pao’s
use of “/s” didn’t help clear up things because the
sign generally implies sarcasm on Reddit, leaving
people guessing as to whether this was all said in
jest among friends, or if Redditors were watching
one of those rare unscripted reality TV style
moments that make the site special.
Pao the perfect patsy
It bears mentioning that if the name Ellen Pao
sounds familiar to you, it’s because she just lost
a high-profile sexual harassment suit she filed
A Gallup poll on the 50th anniversary of the
assassination found that 61% of Americans
believe President J.F. Kennedy was killed in
a conspiracy. What does this have to do with
Reddit? Perhaps more than you’d imagine.

4. SPECIALISSUEGlobeAsia
A
A
S
I
Singapore
Australia
Malaysia
Indonesia
Philippines
Thailand
Taiwan
Others
S$13.00
A$9.95
RM18.00
Rp50,000
P250
B210
NT$210
US$8
MICA (P) 142/10/2007
GROUPS
100 TOP

5. 6
16
96
100
104
106
20
22
26
28
110
112
120
122
123
124

6. 8
ords can often take on
a force of their own.
Once uttered, they cannot
be withdrawn.
Over recent weeks the
government of President Joko
Widodo has been busy meeting
business leaders, economists,
academics and bankers to get a better
sense of what is ailing the economy.
As Suryo Bambang Sulisto,
the chairman of the Indonesian
Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(Kadin), put it at a recent gathering of
business leaders, “we need to get the
real pulse of the economy.”
But how does one get the
real pulse of the economy? For
the government, it should be
through mining data and looking
at fundamental indicators as well
as by talking to business. For the
businessmen, it is studying the
bottom line and sales orders.
So the question then is does
anyone know what is truly ailing
the Indonesian economy? There is
no doubt that the broad economy
is struggling.
Consumption, the key driver of
gross domestic growth over the past
few years, is slowing rapidly. Across
the board, consumers are tightening
their belts and sales are down by 30%
for goods and services.
Indonesia needs to be more competitive
The government says part of the
problem has been an over-reliance on
imports, which has raised the current
account deficit. Indonesia imports too
many goods and services and does not
produce enough domestically.
So import substitution has
become a buzz word. At a recent
event, the head of the Sahid
Group told the audience that
Indonesia must slash the import of
manufactured goods if the country is
to regain economic vigor.
But import substitution in
many circles is a pseudonym
for protectionism and economic
nationalism. Growing economic
nationalism is seen as a threat to
Indonesia’s long-term economic
future as it raises trade barriers and
encourages poor standards.
If more and more Indonesians
utter the words “import substitution”
the words will take on both economic
force as well as social dominance.
Anyone arguing against this policy
will be tainted as unpatriotic and
anti-Indonesia.
No nation wishes to have its
economy and currency controlled
by an outside force. Every elected
government has a duty to protect
the self-interest of the country and
the people. President Joko Widodo
too has a duty to ensure that his
government’s policies ultimately
benefit the Indonesian people.
The challenge is how does
one achieve this goal? Is import
substitution the best way to do it?
Or is keeping an open economy,
encouraging competition and
prioritizing industries in which
Indonesia has a clear economic
advantage the better path to take?
Shoeb Kagda
Editor in Chief
shoeb@globeasia.com