Ellen Pao (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Many users, though, believe the site is straying too far from its ‘anything goes’ origins. Over the last few years, it’s cracked down on sexually suggestive pictures of children, so-called creep shots and hacked nude photographs of celebrities – although in the case of this last, it claimed the reason was copyright rather than morality.
There are good commercial reasons for Reddit to start trying to limit the amount of offensive content it hosts. Last month, announcing plans to try and eliminate harassment, it revealed that the main reason users don’t recommend the site to their friends, even though they use it themselves, is that they don’t want to expose those friends to the nastier corners of the site.
And there are also shareholders to consider, following a $50 million investment last year from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and others that could see pressure for Reddit to take more mainstream ads. Racism homphobia and other prejudice really isn’t a good look.
But one site’s loss is another’s gain: right now, one of the most popular threads on Reddit is a discussion of alternative sites.
And Switzerland-based Voat, a site which mimics Reddit in both function and appearance, has been putting on users by the thousand since the Reddit move was announced. Indeed, its most popular thread at the time of writing is ‘Welcome to all new users from the last round of censorship!’.
Many commenters say they are making the move on principle, rather than because they can’t get through the day without taunting a fat person or two.
“It’s become painfully obvious that Reddit is no longer a platform that protects free speech (especially after they literally admitted they don’t care about it!), and after today’s banning of subreddits with “harassment” I can’t stay any longer,” writes one.
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