Mother Jones

In the minutes following today’s announcement that Ellen Pao, Reddit’s embattled interim CEO, would be stepping down, users of the site responded with glee. Pao has been widely criticized for her tone-deaf firing of a popular employee and years of mistreatment of the site’s unpaid moderators. Yet beneath the celebration lurked a disturbing undercurrent of racism. As of 2:45 p.m. PST, the second most “upvoted” comment beneath the announcement was this:

The biggest problem with the comment isn’t the mocking of Pao’s Asian name. It’s the commenter’s handle, “DylanStormRoof.” Dylann Roof, of course, is the young man accused of massacring nine people at South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last month.

Other Redditors quickly alleged that DylanStormRoof moderates a notoriously racist subreddit:

Reddit’s trolls have been out to get Pao ever since she shut down five toxic subreddits last month, including one called r/shitniggerssay. They also aren’t psyched that she called out Silicon Valley’s misogynistic culture. That’s not to say that Pao’s handling of Reddit’s most controversial communities is the only reason she’s unpopular with users of the site, which is, after all, the 10th most trafficked on the internet. But today’s reaction illustrates the challenges her replacement, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, will face if he wants to rein in the site’s most offensive tendencies.

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Reddit’s Racist Trolls Are Psyched About CEO Ellen Pao’s Resignation