Reddit's interim CEO issued an apology Monday to users furious over alleged censorship and the termination of an employee popular with the online bulletin board's users.

'We screwed up,' Pao wrote in a post to the website as a Change.org petition calling for her resignation hit 190,000 signatures.

'Today, we acknowledge this long history of mistakes,' Pao went on, while vowing changes would be made in the areas of tools, communication and search.

The Change.org petition appeared late last year in part as a response from volunteer moderators disgruntled over perceived mistreatment at the hands of a company that makes money on their unpaid work.

However, tensions came to a head--and the petition began to amass signatures--after the dismissal of Reddit employee Victoria Taylor on Thursday.

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'We screwed up,' Pao wrote in a post to the website as a Change.org petition calling for her resignation hit 190,000 signatures

Pao's apology included a list of areas where she says the site will soon be improved

Volunteer moderators, who work with paid administrators to run the site's discussion threads, turned many of the 'subreddits' dark after communication director's firing.

The threads have since been restored, though 'Redditors' frustration with Pao, who was named interim CEO at the end of last year, has been catalyzed by the firing and subsequent backlash.

Taylor was best known for running the website’s popular ‘Ask Me Anything’ interviews, where celebrities take part in question and answer sessions with the site's 160 million regular visitors a month.

The petition for Pao's resignation was started before the recent protests, and she angered some of the site's users by banning hateful subsections in June

Sudden news of her firing led moderators of the question and answer subsection IamA to close down their thread, followed by a slew of others who said that Taylor was the only site administrator who ever communicated well with them.

She had been praised with her work on the AMAs, which included figures such as Bill Murray, Channing Tatum, Bill Gates, Julian Assange and even Barack Obama.

Pao said Friday night that 'I’m sorry we let our community down yesterday' and pledged better dialogue with moderators.

The petition calling for Pao to resign had previously had less than 30,000 signatures, but has seen support balloon since the Taylor incident, according to Business Insider.

More than 300 message boards or 'subreddits' had been taken down by moderators during the 'revolt' including discussion boards for 'funny', 'pics' and the Ask Me Anything interviews, according to the New York Times.

R/IAmA has more than 8.5 million subscribers /r/funny has almost nine million and /r/askreddit also has about nine million.

Moderators, some of whom have recently been feuding with administrators, quickly lashed out after Taylor was let go with seemingly little to no communication to them.

In a blog post on a subreddit called /r/OutOfTheLoop, one of the moderators of /r/IAmA - known on the website as karmanaut - expressed their dismay at the decision being taken.

‘Today, we learned that Victoria was unexpectedly let go from her position with Reddt,’ they wrote.

‘We all had the rug ripped out from under us and feel betrayed.’

Unconfirmed reports have suggested she was fired for differences of opinion on how to take the site forward.

Pao apologized for poor communication after popular sections of the site were inaccessible on Thursday and Friday because moderators turned threads private (pictured) during a protest

Victoria Taylor was employed as Reddit's Director of Communications in 2013. She had become the main point of contact for interviews run on the popular Ask Me Anything subreddit, until her unexplained dismissal

Many of the website's moderators - who volunteer freely to run the site - are annoyed not only at the firing of Taylor, but at the lack of communication they have been given.

‘The way the admins failed to communicate with AMA's mods and left them without a way to contact the people that were going to do them illustrates the disconnect between admins and the moderators they depend on,’ said a post on the popular /r/todayilearned subreddit.

TEN MOST POPULAR SUBREDDITS THAT WERE SHUT DOWN /r/AskReddit - 8,915,996 subscibers /r/funny - 8,910,496 /r/pics - 8,821,937 /r/todayilearned - 8,780,615 /r/IAmA - 8,519,606 /r/videos - 8,080,586 /r/gaming - 8,020,785 /r/movies - 7,660,540 /r/Music - 7,389,768 /r/technology - 5,146,648 Advertisement

Many subreddits were back online as of Friday, though those who previously opposed Pao have garnered more support after the incident.

In June Pao came under fire for banning five controversial subreddits.

One, known as /r/fatpeoplehate, was an area where people posted vile and hurtful comments about those who are overweight.

However, the website faced a huge backlash as a result, with many critical of the censorship and saying that the CEO did not understate those who most frequently use Reddit.

A graphic from Information is Beautiful in 2012 showed that more than 70 per cent of Reddit users were male.

Some Redditors pointed to Pao's background, which includes a sexual discrimination lawsuit against her former employer Kleiner Perkins alleging that she was passed over for a promotion because she is a woman.

A California jury did not side with her in a case that many point to as highlighting sexism within Silicon Valley, though Pao is appealing the decision.

Reddit functions through individual discussion boards called 'subreddits', more than 300 of which were shut down during the protest

The Change.org petition referenced the suit as a mark against her character.

'A vast majority of the Reddit community believes that Pao, "a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top", has overstepped her boundaries and fears that she will run Reddit into the ground,' and explanation for the campaign said.

Some Reddit users have also taken to calling the CEO, who is Asian, 'Chairman Pao' while comparing her alleged censorship to the Chinese dictator's.

When she banned the five subreddits, some of which were discussion places for hatred of black people and transgender people, large numbers of Redditors upvoted a campaign to make a Nazi image appear in her Google search results.

Other popular posts around the time called her a 'c***', according to Vice.

Vocal parts of the website's community think that she is trying to 'clean up' the user-run site and make it more corporate.

For her part Pao, who when she was hired was largely expected to stay on as permanent CEO, has apologized for the way that Taylor's firing happened. She also pledged to work more closely with those using Reddit.

'I want to apologize for how we handled the transition yesterday. We should have informed the moderators earlier and provided more detail on the transition plan,' she said according to Gawker.

Pao (left) and co-founder Alexis Ohanian (right) both issued statements after the controversy promising better communication between moderators and their team

'We are working to make improvements and create the best experience for our users and we aren’t always perfect. Our community is what makes reddit, reddit and we let you down yesterday.'

She said that Kristine Fasnacht would take over the liaison role between Reddit administrators, moderators and users.

Reddit’s co-founder and executive chairman, Alexis Ohanian, also attempted to calm the situation in a number of posts on the website when subreddits were taken down.

‘We get that losing Victoria has a significant impact on the way you manage your community,’ he wrote.

Taylor has not returned requests for comment, though she posted on Twitter Thursday, 'Thank you to everyone for their good wishes and support. Love you guys'.