Reddit’s interim CEO Ellen Pao (Photo : Reuters)
Several weeks ago, Ellen Pao lost her gender discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital company. She may lose again - her job as interim CEO of Reddit - if the owners of the sharing site would heed what a growing number of Redditors are seeking.
The signatories to a petition to remove Pao, now exceeding 132,000 gathered in just three days, cited in their petition Pao's legal battle as proof of what kind of person she is. The petitioners described Pao as "a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top," quotes Business Insider.
They also charged her of going beyond boundaries in her alleged desire to censor contents in Reddit. To prevent the site from further deterioration, the petitioners see Pao's exit as the only solution. Another way to protest Pao's leadership over Reddit is the closure of hundreds of communities in Reddit.
Volunteer moderators set about 300 subreddit communities, such as the popular "Ask Me Anything," (AMA) to "private" which blocked these communities from public access. The move, which created chaos in Reddit, was done on Friday in response to reports that Pao was allegedly behind the move to fire Victoria Taylor.
Taylor, Reddit's talent director and a popular employees, facilitated the AMA subreddit community that had featured VIP such as U.S. President Barack Obama and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, asked the moderators to return the blacked out communities online. He said he, and not Pao, was responsible for not communicating Taylor's departure letter. Pao also promised to provide the moderators better tools, but the moderators are not biting her offer. The moderators sought a site-wide announcement or blog post apology for the recent developments.
On Friday, Pao apologized to Redditors for what happened on Thursday night. She admitted, "We handled the transition in a way that caused some disruption, and we should have done a better job," quotes Time.
The crisis led Ohanian to appoint Kristine Fasnacht, a current Reddit employee and long-time site user, to be the contact person who would communicate with site moderators. He also belied speculations that Taylor's departure was linked to how she moderated the AMA with Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday. The discussion became disorganized due to a number of questions raised over racial issues.
