Interim CEO of Reddit, Ellen Pao. Source: AFP
IT'S been a tough seven days for Ellen Pao.
The interim CEO of Reddit not only had to undergo a vigorous cross-examination in her $16 million gender bias lawsuit against a former employer, but in recent days has seen users on her company's hugely popular website complain that stories critical of Pao and her husband have been taken down from the site's subsections.
"'Buddy' Fletcher, who is married to the CEO of Reddit, is currently accused of running a big [P]onzi scheme worth millions of dollars — why haven't you heard of it?" one user posted on the site late Monday.
"Because it is being deleted off most subs," the user, lukeyflukey, wrote — and then quickly got 1,654 comments.
Many of the comments were from users scratching their heads over the "disappointing" deletions. They took issue with the changing reasons given for taking down the news stories.
One user called the deletions "a f—ing embarrassment."
Alphonse "Buddy" Fletcher ran a hedge fund, Fletcher International, that is now bankrupt. He owes millions in unpaid legal bills and tax liens and the bankruptcy trustee described it as a Ponzi scheme.
Fletcher still owns several apartments in the storeyed Dakota on Manhattan's Upper West Side while his defunct fund owes more than $140 million in court judgments.
Alphonse "Buddy" Fletcher. (Photo: Crain's New York Business) Source: New York Post
"Wow all the posts from when this first hit the front page are just gone," wrote a Reddit user called "IliekDeers" four days ago. "They aren't [deleted], they're just gone. Not a single trace of any of them left. The f— reddit?"
One Reddit user posted five examples of Fletcher posts being removed and cried foul.
Reddit is known as a democratic site run by its users where free speech is sacrosanct. The more votes a story gets, the more likely it will be posted on a front page.
But in recent years, it has instituted several rules to limit the controversies over its often-offensive postings.
The Fletcher posts were removed because they broke those rules, say some users.
"Basically with a story like this, people jump to conclusions and start completely ignoring the rules while kneejerk up-voting everything that supports it to the front page," said one Reddit user in an email to The Post.
"It's not some grand conspiracy, just a bunch of people that all of a sudden feel victimised because something that's 'important' to them happened to break the rules and was removed," the email continued.
The posts weren't removed by Reddit itself, but by users running the groups where they were posted, the user claimed.
The brouhaha couldn't come at a worse time for Pao, who is suing Kleiner Perkins, claiming she was fired after complaining of sexual discrimination.
This week, former tech analyst Mary Meeker, now a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins, said she never encountered sexual discrimination at the firm.
Plus, lawyers for Kleiner Perkins want to introduce evidence of Fletcher's financial woes as a reason Pao filed her $16 million suit.
The move by Kleiner plus the Fletcher story deletions from Reddit have been like jet fuel for conspiracy theorists.
This article originally appeared on New York Post.
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