Reddit goes dark in protest at sacking of popular director Victoria Taylor

Taylor’s dismissal came as a shock to AMA moderators, who are volunteer users that help manage individual communities within Reddit.

Original Story: Reddit Inc’s main “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) subreddit, r/IAmA, is one of the site’s most popular forums and is responsible for some of the community’s most memorable moments, but the subreddit has been suddenly locked down following the unexpected departure of Victoria Taylor, Reddit’s AMA organizer. She said in a short AMA of her own that she was “dazed” after the firing, but didn’t give any hints as to why it happened.

A statement on the IAmA page reads: “Due to internal administration reorganization at reddit, /r/IAmA has temporarily been made private by the moderators”.

Ms Taylor has left Reddit in mysterious circumstances, and IAmA’s moderators, when they learnt of her being let go, took down the section in protest. Without her filling this role, we will be utterly overwhelmed. Recent moves by administrators to ban offensive subreddits have thrown the site into disagreement with its community; this time around, we might see an all-out showdown between the people who pay for the site, and those holding the reins of popular support. “We have been really blindsided by all of this” Karmanaut added. “As a result, we will need to go through our processes and see what can be done without her”.

“We are building tools to help you all do your jobs more effectively …”

As it stands, it means that browsing Reddit is severely limited and filled with debate about how the website is run.

The site-wide rebellion is for more than just Victoria, with several moderators claiming the staff at Reddit do not appreciate the thousands of hours unpaid volunteers put into keeping subreddits clean, safe and functional.

Reddit serves as a social news platform, allowing for users to comment and engage at a broad level.

The fact that users couldn’t access numerous most important subreddits will most likely have a major impact on the website, so this kind of pressure from moderators won’t go unnoticed. Thousands of Reddit users have also flocked to alternative sites such as Voat, causing them to struggle under the huge spikes in traffic.

Among other things, Taylor arranged the interviews, verified the identity of the person doing the interview, facilitated the Q&A, and helped the uninitiated navigate the world of Reddit. In response to the blackout, Ohanian wrote that the message was “received loud and clear”, and urged moderators to bring the shut down sections back online. The information we have requested is essential to ensure that money is not changing hands at any point in the procedure which is necessary for /r/IAmA to remain equal and egalitarian.