Reddit in Turmoil; Bitcoin Friendly Alternative Emerges

Within the past week, hundreds of thousands of Reddit users rallied together through protests and demonstrations in response to recent decisions of interim CEO Ellen Pao. Throughout the chaos, many users of Reddit, a social network and news site, have advertised and migrated to Voat, a Reddit clone, as part of the protests.

The turmoil began in response to the firing of Reddit employee Victoria Taylor. Victoria, the former communications director, was an active member of the Reddit community, and universally appreciated among users.

Victoria, before being released, was the sole employee in charge of Reddit’s popular AMA features. Ask Me Anything (AMA) is a subreddit within the site where the community can ask questions to celebrities, politicians, and regular people with interesting stories. Victoria was the driving force behind these AMAs, she coordinated guests, made sure the responses were genuine (as opposed as an agent acting as a celebrity), and helped out many of the special guests with reading Reddit and writing their responses. Over the years, prominent figures such as Bill Gates, Gordon Ramsay, and even President Barrack Obama have participated. Without Victoria, it will be difficult to continue to incorporate many famous people to take part in AMAs.

In response to Ellen Pao firing Victoria, many of the most popular subreddits went private, prohibiting any users from viewing the contents. In addition, Reddit users signed a petition to have Ellen Pao removed from CEO. So far, the petition has over 190,000 signatures.

Another response to this decision was a massive migration of Reddit users over to an alternative of the site, Voat. The framework of Voat is very similar to Reddit – users can vote for or against other users’ comments and posts, and users can also create subverses, which work in the same way as subreddits.

In addition, Voat is also strongly in favor of utilizing Bitcoin. Unlike Reddit, Voat plans on sharing revenue with users, by awarding well received content with Bitcoin. The site also accepts Bitcoin donations, and since the drama with Reddit began several days ago, Voat has already received more than 50 Bitcoins in donations.