Reddit CEO admits trolling Trump supporters

Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman has admitted changing posts written by Donald Trump supporters on the internet forum.

He explained he redirected abuse targeted at him to moderators of the r/the_donald thread instead, but even this small action, rather than editing the content of the posts led to people accusing him of censorship.

Huffman said his decision to change the posts was a response to the attacks he received after the sharing site removed a thread suggesting Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were involved in a paedophile ring that was running from a pizza restaurant in Washington DC.

The owner of the pizza restaurant contacted social media sites including Reddit asking them to take the posts down because he was receiving death threats from people who believed the conspiracy.

"It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff," Huffman said in a post on Reddit. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a paedophile constantly. As the CEO, I shouldn't play such games, and it's all fixed now."

He added that users of Reddit weren't the only ones who were angry with the website's CEO tweaking posts his staff were also upset he had put the network's reputation in jeapardy.

Huffman's controversial actions come only a few months after he returned to Reddit as the company's CEO. Although he co-founded the site, he left to work on travel service Hipmunk, but came back last year when previous interim chief executive Ellen Pao resigned.

Pao was forced to leave the company when Reddit moderators closed parts of the site down as a protest to the firing of community manager Victoria Taylor. However, it has since come to light that co-founder and board member Alexis Ohanian was responsible for the decision.