So why is it being censored?
Ellen Pao, the interim CEO of reddit, took the helm in January. She charged her former employer, Kleiner Perkins (a venture capital firm), with gender-based discrimination following her release. The jury ruled that Pao was not passed up for promotion and fired based on her gender. After the trial, however, Pao requested $2.7m not to appeal the case. This combined with the fact that the amount of money would be enough to cover her husband's $2.7m legal fees owed to his former employer, and we have an official and ever-looming shitstorm.
Any conversation about this topic on reddit was hushed. Admins went around banning users, posts, and links to stories surrounding the trial. 8 separate articles and an entire sub were deleted. The remaining Ellen Pao hate subreddits were left up (or ignored) for two reasons:
- the communities were very, very small (1 sub had ~1200 people, the rest had <100)
- most of the Pao hate shifted to larger subs, reaching the frontpage
Then came the banning of five subreddits. These bannings weren't unforeseen, as a blog post nearly a month before described survey data showing many users were subject to harassment through the site. The post also explicitly said
Because of this, we are changing our practices to prohibit attacks and harassment of individuals through reddit with the goal of preventing them.
Pao, under reddit user /u/ejkp, commented on the onsite banpost with the four remaining subreddits. Her comment's score was -2177, and sparked a discussion. /u/derram_2 said
So, this is about being offensive and not about being safe.
Yet /u/harkku said
I know for a fact that /r/trans_fags was harassing people through /u/TotesMessenger, half their mods have been banned and the others were avoiding bans.
so at least some of the harassment claims were true. The claim of reddit's blogpost states that the changes are
[...] specifically designed to prevent attacks against people, not ideas.
which is entirely fair. Extremely racist, derogatory, and borderline illegal subs remain online despite their disgustingly off-kilter moral compasses. Why? They don't harass people to the degree that others did. There is a difference between offending and harassing people, and it is not a fine line. Would most people like to see subreddits like /r/coontown and /r/picsofdeadkids banned? Yes, most definitely. Are they going to be banned? No.
/r/fatpeoplehate and the others were probably targeted because they were most likely perpetrators of harassment. In general, fph was about shaming fat people and downplaying the 'fat acceptance' movement, not about personally targeting users of the sub. Most claimed that those offended could simply not subscribe or unsubscribe from the sub. Some users probably took it too far, as reddit sometimes does, and caused the downfall of the sub by personally attacking users.
However, there was no explanation provided for the censorship of articles surrounding Pao's case and the annoying subs designed to 'out' her. Was Pao personally harassed and afraid for her personal safety? If she deleted them, what did she expect? Everything to go unnoticed? Not gonna happen.
And then this week, Victoria Taylor (or, as she was known on reddit, /u/chooter) was fired. She organized and administrated the IAmA requests and discussion subreddits for a long time, including AmAs from Barack Obama, three from Neil deGrasse Tyson, and many, many more. After a disastrous AmA with Jesse Jackson, chooter was released. This sparked a new reddit movement, where subs were (and still are) shut down to protest the lack of communication between moderators and admins.
Pao shouldn't be disbarred because she seems petty, tried to recoup her husband's losses through her own completely separate (and well-timed) trial, or said that
[...] it's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform.
She should be removed because she deliberately - and without restraint - violated reddit's policies on censorship. While reddit claimed they would only censor because of harassment, Pao did so because she was annoyed and offended. A culmination is on the horizon, and it will set a precedent for the rest of the internet as to how we act in response to unnecessary censorship. Just like Pao said:
Reddit is the internet.
You're right, Ellen. It's too bad that you decided to mess with it.
