The Fall of the House of Reddit

Ellen K. Pao the Interim CEO of Reddit isn't very popular right now. In fact, in her brief tenure as the head of 'The Front Page of the Internet', she's managed to galvanise most of the internet against her. It's an extremely impressive accomplishment if your goal is abject failure. She's Reddit's own twisted Mance Rayder, uniting the diverse wildling clans for a single cause. People who post on forums about Dogecoin, Politics and yes, even the Furries have put up a banner that reads “Find us on Voat”. Where did it all go wrong and importantly for us what does this mean for advertisers?
The problems seems to have kicked off last month when Pao banned several Subreddits (forums), which users believe personally offended her, the largest of which was ‘Fat People Hate’. This was done under the manifesto of cracking down on harassment. It did not go down well. While this particular forum was combative, it wasn’t targeting or harassing individuals. In fact, there were strict rules against it. This was seen by many on the site as the first wave of content cleansing, censoring the parts of Reddit that Pao personally found distasteful. As of writing there are currently forums about having intercourse with dogs or the graphic sexualisation of My Little Ponies. (NSFW) It’s not that they exist, it’s fostering an environment of open speech where they can exist.