Reddit slammed by former CEO Ellen Pao for ‘amplifying’ racism and hate

Reddit’s former CEO, Ellen Pao, sharply criticized the technology company on Tuesday after it published an open letter condemning racism. Pao said the social network knowingly makes money with hate. “You can’t tell BLM if reddit promotes and monetises white supremacy and hatred all day,” Pao tweeted, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, known on the platform as u / spec sent the open letter to his employees on Monday and also posted it on Twitter. “We don’t tolerate hate, racism and violence, and although we have to work on our platform to fight them, our values ​​are clear,” he wrote.

Pao, who served as interim CEO of the company from late 2014 to mid-2015, retweeted a link to the letter along with her reply that she felt obliged to get Reddit to quit.

Reddit did not respond to a request for comment.

A number of technology companies contribute to expanding public support for the following Black Lives Matter movement the death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last week. But with this outpouring comes a backlash from critics who say that some of these companies have not played an active role in the fight against racism in the past or even let it thrive.

The NFL and NBA subreddits, both large and active forums, were consistent with Pao’s assessment. go private to protest the site’s guidelines. When navigating to the subreddits, a user will encounter messages prompting Reddit management to introduce stricter policies against bigotry and hatred on the platform.

Both locations are closed for 24 hours.

Reddit has long been criticized for not ridding its platform of racist forums, especially the subreddit “the_donald” that Pao referred to in her tweet. The subreddit, launched in 2015 when Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign, has a long history of hosting conspiracy theories and a host of racist and misogynistic content.

Despite continuing calls to ban the_donald, the subreddit has survived the_donald has been quarantined in June 2019. The quarantine prevents the subreddit from appearing in the search results and requires users with a verified email address Check this option to view content.

During her time at Reddit, Pao banned five subreddits to promote harassment outside of the company. It was replaced by Huffman after She left the company in July 2015 after complaints from Critics who accused them of censorship. Huffman has too several abusive subreddits banned While at the helm of the company, but like other tech CEOs, he struggled to strike a balance between moderating malicious content on the platform and maintaining it as a forum for freedom of expression.

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Ellen Pao goes on and hopes to improve the record

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CNET’s Andrew Morse contributed to this story.