An online petition calling for the resignation of Ellen Pao, Reddit's interim CEO, has attracted more than 130,000 signatures, growing rapidly in the past two days since the dismissal of a key administrator at the community-curated news site.
The Change.org petition describes a lack of confidence in Pao, who petition organizers accuse of ushering in "a new age of censorship" and worry that she will "run Reddit into the ground." The petition, which was launched three weeks ago, grew from 16,000 signatures on Friday to more than 130,000 two days later after the alleged firing of Victoria Taylor, one of the social news site's highest profile administrators.
Pao has been a polarizing figure in Silicon Valley since filing a high-profile discrimination lawsuit against her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Pao, former junior partner with Kleiner Perkins, sought $16 million from the prestigious venture capital firm, alleging she was fired in 2012 after complaining about pervasive sexism. A jury in March rejected her claim, but Pao has said she intends to appeal the verdict.
The petition's growth comes amid a protest over the alleged firing of Taylor, the site's director of talent and a key administrator responsible for overseeing the Ask Me Anything subreddit, a section that allows Reddit users to engage in a real-time Q&A with famous personalities such as Bill Gates, President Obama and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Taylor's reported departure led other moderators of the marquee IAmA subreddit to switch the page's settings to private, rendering the Reddit userbase unable to view the page. Since then, dozens of other subreddits -- each with several million subscribers -- have also been made private, instead re-directing readers to a static landing page.
Taylor's departure is not the only complaint many in the Reddit community have about Pao's leadership abilities, Reddit moderator Gilgamesh explained in an online post.
"As much as Victoria is loved, this reaction is not all a result of her departure: there is a feeling among many of the moderators of reddit that the admins do not respect the work that is put in by the thousands of unpaid volunteers who maintain the communities of the 9,656 active subreddits, which they feel is expressed by, among other things, the lack of communication between them and the admins, and their disregard of the thousands of mods who keep reddit's communities going," Gilgamesh wrote in a Reddit post.
In response to a request for comment on the petition, Reddit spokeswoman said that Pao "has the full support of the team." In an interview with Time magazine published late Friday, Pao apologized for the circumstances surrounding Taylor's departure.
"We handled the transition in a way that caused some disruption, and we should have done a better job," she said.
Pao, who joined Reddit as its business and partnerships strategist in 2013, was named interim CEO of the site in November after the resignation of former CEO Yishan Wong.
Updated at 10:10 a.m. PT with Reddit comment.
