Reddit reacted to banning hate with hate

Reddit has banned five subreddits in a move that has caused a backlash of anger on the social news site.

Ellen Pao, Reddit interim CEO, has been subjected to intense criticism following the decision to remove r/fatpeoplehate, r/hamplanethatred, r/s--tn--erssay, r/neof-- and r/transf--s.

She explained in a post that the decision was taken as a result of harassment coming from users of the sites, not the content of the subreddits.

A post credited to herself and Jessica Moreno, head of community and support, and founder Alexis Ohanian, read:

We’re banning behavior, not ideas

Her decision has come under criticism as the front page of Reddit has seen a number of posts opposing the decision and targeting Ellen Pao personally.

Posts have risen to the front page attempting to have google image search results under her name return the nazi flag and a petition has been made on Change.org to remove her as CEO, which has currently been signed by 9,600.

The site has also recirculated articles regarding a gender discrimination case Pao lost in March of this year.

Of the top 100 posts on Reddit from the past 24 hours, as of this afternoon, 46 involved the banning of subreddits and 31 involved obesity as a prominent topic.

Over a quarter of the posts expressed anti-Pao sentiment in their content.

Posts reacting to the ban are multitudinous, continuing well past the top 100 and show a clear outrage by some users of the site to the decision.

Many posts encouraged users to upvote aggressively anti-Pao content in an attempt to gain prominence.

These included Nazi flags, communist comparisons to Chairman Mao and one post encouraging users to upvote to increase her c--- rating.

Stay classy, Reddit.

While the decision to ban subreddits with less offensive content than some other, darker corners of the site is questionable, some of the attacks on Pao as a person are downright vitriolic.

However the line between harrassment and freedom of speech is toed by Reddit management in the coming weeks, it appears that users ability to make hate-filled personal attacks prominent, is currently safe.

More: Reddit has announced a new privacy policy