An online petition to oust Reddit interim CEO Ellen Pao now has more than 160,000 supporters, with more than 100,000 signing in the past few days.
Moderators and users were outraged after the firing of a high-ranking and beloved Reddit employee, Victoria Taylor, and shut down hundreds of the most active and renowned subreddits in protest over the weekend. Taylor oversaw the site s popular Ask Me Anything feature. In an open to letter to Pao, moderators cite the inadequate communication between the site s administrators and moderators as reasoning for their grievances, though this seems to be the straw that broke the camel s back.
The firing of Taylor is the latest point in the long-running narrative of user discontent with Pao. The petition, which was started last month, accuses Pao of being a a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top and claims that action must be taken to prevent Reddit from being further run into the ground.
Pao lost a high-profile gender-discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers earlier this year.
After the protests over the weekend, Pao apologized for the lack of transparency, promising better moderating tools and more communication.
I m sorry we let our community down, said Pao in an interview with the New York Times. We should have informed our community moderators about the transition and worked through it with them.
Though Reddit has declined to give a reason as to why Taylor was released, Pao said the vast majority of Reddit users are uninterested in what occurred and that the most virulent detractors are a vocal minority.
Most of the community is made up of thoughtful people, and they can appreciate what we all do, even if we don t always agree, Pao added.
Reddit has had a turbulent year, and some are speculating that it will experience a downfall similar to Digg. After the recently imposed bans on hateful subreddits such as fatpeoplehate, some users have fled to a Swiss clone named Voat.co. (That site s admins posted a rather knowing comment after noticing a high spike in traffic, titled What did they do this time? )
Pao told the New York Times that she is unfazed by recent events and the petition.
It s an exciting job, said Pao. We re doing a lot behind the scenes that people have not seen yet.
Photo: Ellen Pao arrives at Superior Court in San Francisco on March 10, 2015 (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
