Ellen Pao and the reddit admins have faced considerable criticism over their decision to ban a number of subreddits, the most high-profile of which was FatPeopleHate (FPH). In a move that many have labeled a blatant case of censorship, Pao and company said the bans represented an attempt to stamp out harassment on the social networking platform.
“We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior, not ideas,” stated the administrators in a self.announcements post.
Interim CEO Ellen Pao said the team’s goal was to nurture an open platform that allowed “authentic conversations.” She explained that reddit would only step in an enact bans when subreddit moderators had failed to act.
Thus far, five subreddits have been banned, along with a significant number of moderators affiliated with said subreddits. Of course, this has prompted a mass exodus from reddit, with Voat mopping up a significant proportion of the disgruntled group.
In the aftermath of the incident, Voat’s chief technical officer, known by the name “Atko,” said he was saddened by reddit’s newfound censorship measures. “We are sorry to see reddit change like this, in this way, in such an accelerated fashion. We would have never anticipated such events,” elaborated the CTO.
Promising an open and censorship-free platform, Voat was launched back in 2014. However, the site’s operators recently experienced a slight snafu, after its servers were unceremoniously shut down by its Germany-based hosting provider, hosteurope.de. According to Atko, their hosting provider’s decision was politically motivated.
“Our hosting provider, hosteurope.de, has terminated all our contracts and shut down all our servers without issuing a warning or trying to talk to us,” explained Atko in a Voat.co announcement post. “This includes my private server which was only used to host my girlfriend’s blog. She is a scientist. She published her research papers on that blog (preformatted papers to which she owns the copyright). That server contained no other data whatsoever.”
The site has also been lambasted by a number of DDoS attacks, crippling Voat’s servers over protracted periods. As a temporary solution, Voat has transitioned to a new cloud platform. Atko has asked the community for donations, via PayPal and Bitcoin, to cover the server costs and keep the site operational. Despite this, there remains considerable doubt over the site’s future. “We will have to carefully evaluate our long-term options of providing a platform of free speech if we are to stay online,” wrote Atko.
For Viral Global News’ take on the bans, check out our previous post on reddit’s curious censorship measures.