Reddit Community Asking CEO Ellen Pao to Leave After ‘Fat People Hate’ Subreddit is Shut Down

This week Reddit shut down five communities. The reason for the shutdowns is because the subreddits went against a new anti-harassment program led by interim chief executive Ellen Pao. The most popular community closed was called Fat People Hate. The subreddit made fun of overweight people and was made up of pictures and comments. Since its removal a Change.org petition is asking Pao to step down.

Pao said in her blog that she was banning "behavior" and not "ideas." Her plan is to "change" the community.

"Today we are announcing a change in community management on Reddit. Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform," Pao said in her subreddit titled Removing Harassing Tweets.

"We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward. We want to be open about our involvement: We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don't take action. We're banning behavior, not ideas."

Right now someone by the name of Billy Johnson created the Change.org petition that asked Pao to step down. The petition claims that Pao is "a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top." It also says that the CEO has overstepped her boundaries.

"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," the petition said. "Alternative sites to Reddit.com have sprung up and have received vast amounts of traffic within the recent months. Action must be taken to prevent Reddit from being further run into the ground."

As of now, the petition has more than 5,000 signatures.

Do you think CEO Ellen Pao overstepped her boundaries by banning the subreddits?