Yishan Wong, the controversial chief executive officer of $500 million online noticeboard Reddit, has resigned from his 'stressful and draining' position after a disagreement over office space.

Outgoing: Controversial Reddit CEO Yishan Wong has chosen to leave the website after 2.5 years

The outgoing CEO, who had fronted the site for two and a half years, was trying to move the company headquarters out of San Francisco to Daly City, about 10 miles south.

His departure follows Reddit's involvement in the recent celebrity photo hacking scandal, after the site failed to immediately take down a page that users were using to view shots of stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton.

Reddit's 'lead investor', Y Combinator president Sam Altman, said there was a disagreement with Wong over the 'location and amount of money to spend on a lease', according to ABC News.

'To be clear, though, we didn’t ask or suggest that he resign - he decided to when we didn’t approve the new office plan,' Altman wrote on his website.

However Wong wrote on website Quora: 'After two and a half years, I'm basically completely worn out, and it was having significantly detrimental effects on my personal life.'

About the 'office location issue', he wrote: 'It's probably something we could have worked out.'

'I feel the board is a very supportive and friendly one, but we had a strategic disagreement wherein I felt that locating an office in San Francisco proper is an incredibly difficult thing given the strains the city is facing and the high rents it imposes on employees who wish to live close to the office,' Wong wrote on Quora.

'On the other hand, many of our current employees live there so the proposal to find an office location just outside the city (Daly City is immediately to the southwest outside of SF) was very unpopular, and there are plenty of startups who locate in SF and are very successful.

'If the job had been an energizing one rather than one that had been so draining, this probably wouldn't have been an issue I resigned over.

'But it was, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved to have the burden off my shoulders.

'If anything, I probably pushed myself way too far.'

Controversy: In September Reddit shut down its online forum The Fappening, which was created to view, post and share leaked naked photos of celebrities. Visitors to the forum are now greeted with this message

Replacement: Reddit chief operating officer Ellen Pao has stepped in as the interim CEO following Wong's departure this week

Reddit commands an estimated audience of 174 million people.

Twitter, by comparison, has an audience of about 290 million.

Wong has been replaced by Reddit chief operating officer Ellen Pao in the interim.

In September, the website came under fire for failing to pull down one of their forums called 'The Fappening', which was one of the primary places where the hacked celebrity nudes were being swirled.

In finally banning the offending forums, six days after they were set up, Wong suggested the delayed response was a freedom of speech issue, despite the invasions of privacy being lamented as criminal.

Wong described Reddit as 'the government of a new type of community' rather than a company running a website,

We uphold the ideal of free speech on reddit as much as possible not because we are legally bound to, but because we believe that you - the user - has the right to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, and that it is your responsibility to do so.

When you know something is right, you should choose to do it.

'But as much as possible, we will not force you to do it.'

Inappropriate: Some of the leaked nude photos being shared were reportedly of underage Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney, which would have been classified as child pornography

A major turning point in Reddit deciding to disable The Fappening came after photos of Olympic athlete McKayla Maroney that were taken when she was underage began to circulate.

Sharing such photos would be considered child pornography.