Interview with mod of /r/EllenPaoInAction

As mentioned previously, /r/EllenPaoInAction vanished under semi-mysterious circumstances. An interview with mod wfa19 clears up most of the confusion.

Here you can see his experience of Reddit's ire:

What was the reaction of the Reddit community to your taking the sub down? Were they supportive, and did they understand your reasons?

The only posts made about it were on subreddits like Subredditcancer, who already have a deep distaste of Pao, so nobody actually supported me taking the sub down. However, half of the top comments that were on that post were laughable (most of them insisting the subreddit was not racist, when the CSS had pictures referencing the Japanese Imperial Army and Communist China). Some people said that I was a coward, and I admit my behavior was cowardish in shutting the sub down, but I didn’t want to hand the subreddit over to anyone on the mod team because I knew the racism would just get worse.

We can expect more of this since Reddit, unlike other social media sites, prefers to work indirectly. That is, they tell everyone what is expected and people act in anticipation of enforcement. Like other social media sites, Reddit has almost zero transparency in what it censors and by whose choice.

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