Ellen Pao: Reddit appears to autoban links from image hosting site made to abuse CEO

While moderators can undo the censorship of the links, it appears to be the latest action taken to reduce abusive posts on the site

Reddit users are reporting that the social news site has placed automatic bans on Slimgur image links, in order to curb the number of posts attacking CEO Ellen Pao and obesity.

Reddit has a close relationship to Imgur, the image hosting website, which forms a large proportion of the website’s links.

After the recent decision to ban subreddits for harassing people, the front page of the site was cluttered with posts expressing anger at the decision made by CEO Ellen Pao.

A large number of the posts also expressed personal abuse towards Ms Pao, using links from Slimgur, a site which appears to have been set up as a competitor to Imgur, performing a similar function with the intent of hosting posts abusive to Ms Pao and the decision.

Users of the r/kotakuinaction subreddit, attempted to test whether the links appear deleted when posted, and produced screencaps which appeared to suggest this was the case.

Many users speculated the reason for what appeared to be automatic bans of links to Slimgur, unless a moderator specially approved the links on a comment by comment basis.

The r/kotakuinaction subreddit is dedicated to discussion surrounding gamergate and censorship and seen to be an environment highly opposed to feminist critisms of gamergate.

Many users of the site have been discussing alternatives in recent days as a result of the decisions, and Voat.co, a site which runs in a similar fashion to Reddit, has experienced high traffic in recent days due to migrating users.

Last May Ms Pao said that Reddit, often touted as 'the front page of the internet' did not have a goal "to be a completely free-speech platform".

Last month Reddit had 172,710,261 unique visitors, generating 7,566,868,985 page views.

Reddit has been contacted for comment.