The reddit firestorm continues as a petition calling for interim CEO Ellen Pao’s resignation reaches over 130,000 signatures. The social sharing website experienced a bit of a shutdown as a number of community-run subreddits set themselves to “private” as a means of protest against the firing of a popular reddit employee.
When the reddit-employed AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor was let go on Friday, the AMA subreddit went dark as its moderators sparked a protest that brought the website to a near-standstill. Many other popular subreddits joined, setting themselves to private in solidarity, thus blocking people from viewing their content. Taylor was a central “go-to” figure for a lot of the moderators, and her sudden firing struck a chord with them.
It’s important to note that this isn’t the first time in recent history that reddit has faced backlash from its users. When the admins removed a number of subreddits dedicated to promoting harassment, the affected users of said subreddits began to harass CEO Pao. They believed that their “freedom of speech” was being infringed upon, so they began to “upvote disparaging entries” to drown out supporters and smear Pao’s name. The irony. It burns.
And, of course, Pao is no stranger to the controversy spotlight. She famously sued venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins for sexual harassment earlier this year. The petition highlights this fact, stating:
After Pao lost her gender discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins she was appointed CEO of Reddit Inc and Reddit entered into a new age of censorship. A vast majority of the Reddit community believes that Pao, “a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top”, has overstepped her boundaries and fears that she will run Reddit into the ground.
This entire situation represents a unique problem for the website. The majority of reddit’s content is submitted by its users, and it’s organized and moderated by a community of volunteer moderators. So, if reddit wanted to maintain that culture of autonomy, they couldn’t exactly go and bring the subreddits back online themselves. Over the past few days, the subreddits have returned, but there still remains the unanswered question of where the website as a whole goes from here.
(via Jezebel)
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