Not sure if your anecdote applies here: as Reddit CEO, she made a number of decisions that were unpopular with mods and users alike - entirely not related to her court action.

At which point people decided to use her court action as part of their "proof" that she's a "SJW" and therefore to be hated.

And you are a case in point; spez (Steve Huffman, CEO) actually made those decisions and used Pao as a fall-woman.

> And you are a case in point

I wasn't aware that spez was co-CEO with ekjp... I thought he only became CEO afterwards. Even if the board/spez forced her to make all of the unpopular decisions (there were many), the buck still stopped with her as the CEO[1], fall-woman or not. Also, why did spez want Victoria gone? He made Ellen Pao fire her too, right?

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_ap...

Actually kn0thing/co-founder Alexis Ohanian fired Victoria, but Ellen Pao ended up taking the blame for that too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0t...

Note, I'm not affiliated with Pao, I just thought her treatment by the reddit community was extremely disappointing.

I thought that was because the closed the subreddits focused on harassment. e.g. r/FatPeopleHate. Talking shit about her law suit was just a wedge issue to get under her skin by people predisposed to abusing others.