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The Reddit Files
Confirmed

Reddit Fires Admin Aimee Challenor After Censorship Backlash

In March 2021 Reddit faced a site-wide protest after it removed posts naming a newly hired admin, Aimee Challenor (now Knight), and banned a moderator who shared a news article about her. On March 24, CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit had not vetted her background and that she no longer worked there.

Mar 24, 2021
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Whose side it served: Neither party

The protest drew users across the spectrum and targeted Reddit's suppression of discussion, not a partisan cause.

What the record shows

Challenor, a former UK Green Party candidate, was suspended by the Greens in 2018 after appointing her father as election agent while he faced child sexual abuse charges; he was convicted and sentenced to 22 years. A moderator of a UK politics subreddit was banned for posting an article that referenced her, and Reddit later said this was a mistake and reinstated the moderator. Hundreds of subreddits went private in protest. Huffman wrote that Reddit 'did not adequately vet her background,' that from March 9 it had removed content naming the employee, and that it had 'over-indexed on protection.'

In their words

“We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.”— Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO · source
“we over-indexed on protection”— Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO · source
The other side

Reddit said its actions were meant to stop a harassment campaign against an employee, who was not accused of any crime herself, and it reversed the enforcement errors within weeks.

Sources

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