UPDATED 06:37 EDT / MAY 20 2015

NEWS

Ellen Pao confirms intent to make Reddit a safe space, doesn’t believe in free speech

Reddit’s interim Chief Executive Officer Ellen Pao has confirmed redditors’ worst fears following a policy change last week, saying in an interview that she intends to turn Reddit into a safe space.

Pao, previously a failed litigant in a sexual discrimination case, told National Public Radio (NPR) that the new policy reflected that it was not Reddit’s goal to “be a completely free-speech platform.”

“We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time.”

Upping the ante from simply targeting individuals alone, Pao spoke about her desire to target subreddits that included content some may find harassing or objectionable.

“The question is whether it would make them fear for their safety or the safety of those around them or where it makes them feel like it’s not a safe platform.”

Pao gave no timeline for when Reddit would start banning subreddits based on the complaints of social justice warriors (SJWs) and other precious petals, but confirmed it was coming.

“We are currently focused on addressing harassment perpetrated by individual users. We know we do have a problem of group harassment as well, but we’re trying to address one problem at a time and we will get to group harassment next.”

As noted in our last post on Pao’s increasingly dictatorial social justice campaign at Reddit, the problem comes down to how you define harassment; it’s one thing to stop an individual actually harassing another individual in the strictest sense of the word, but harassment according to SJWs is anything and everything they disagree with.

A safe space, which is what Pao confirms once again is what she is aiming for, is “a place where anyone can relax and be able to fully express, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe,” a place where descent to the ultra left-wing SJW political agenda is not accepted in any form what so-ever.

If there was any doubt last week what Pao’s agenda really is, this interview will have put to bed those doubts.

A betting man would be looking at setting up a alternative to Reddit about now because if Pao enforces her social justice agenda on Reddit, it’s only a matter of time until we see another Digg with millions leaving the service in the coming 6 to 12 months and looking for a new site to spend their time on.

Love Reddit or hate it, its value is in its mostly unfiltered freedom of expression, and Pao isn’t remotely interested in maintaining that.

Image credit: evablue/Flickr/CC by 2.0

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