An online petition asking Reddit to oust interim CEO Ellen Pao has added more than 100,000 signatures since Friday, when news broke that a popular employee of the site was suddenly gone and volunteer moderators shut down hundreds of the site's communities in protest.

On Friday, Reddit users speculated that the employee, talent director Victoria Taylor, was fired. Taylor posted a comment that seemed to support that viewpoint, saying she was "dazed" by the news.

Taylor helped run the popular "Ask Me Anything" or iAMA feature, which has featured guests such as Bill Gates and President Obama.

To protest her apparent dismissal, moderators set that subreddit community to "private," blocking it from view. Although Reddit has paid employees, many of its communities are moderated by volunteers who aren't part of the company.

Since Friday, the site has been thrown into utter chaos, as volunteers hid hundreds of other subreddits from view.

Cofounder Alexis Ohanian has taken "responsibility" for not communicating news of Taylor's departure better and begged for moderators to put the blacked out subreddits back online.

 A petition to remove Ellen Pao as Reddit CEO has added more than 100,000 signatures in 3 days