Earlier today a certain Victoria Taylor was allegedly fired, without a warning and with a suddenness associated with a lightning bolt, from her position as Head of Talent at Reddit. Getting a pink slip isn’t something unnatural and in fact, when heads of departments on other social media sites left or got sacked, the internet would be in a flurry but the social media platform would continue to function. Not in this case.
She was one of the sites high profile administrators, going by the user handle /u/chooter. Her job description entailed the administration of the Ask Me Anything subreddit, a section of Reddit that allows users to take part in real time Q&As with famous celebrities or people of note such as President Obama or Bill Gates. So when Victoria was fired, it left one of the arguably most popular subreddits in turmoil.
The subsequent effect was a chain reaction across the site’s subreddits, with many shutting down in protest at the sacking and going dark, allowing only moderators to access them.
The first to lead the charge was of course r/IAmA, the subreddits Victoria was until recently, in charge of. Its moderators made it go dark shortly after the allegedly sacking made the news. Following shirts thereafter were other top subreddits such as /r/videos, /r/gaming, /r/gadgets and /r/askreddit (a personal favourite of mine) to name but a handful of the dozen that followed in /r/IAmA’s lead.
If you’re thinking that this is a rather extreme reaction by the community, what you have to understand is that Reddit depends upon its community for survival. Having just clocked in over a decade in existence, Reddit is sometimes dubbed as the nexus of the internet, hosting one of the largest repositories of user generated links to stories from around the internet and physical world as well as being one of the few places that acts as a discussion forum for nearly every single topic imaginable. As a result, Redditors are fiercely loyal to one another and to the moderators and admins who run the subreddits. It is one of the few places on the internet where people truly believe that the sanctity of free speech isn’t blemished.
The suddenness of the sacking was according to many moderators, akin to having the rug pulled from beneath your feet.
“I’m scrambling right now trying to get the AMAs for /r/books figured out,” wrote moderator Chtorrr. “Right now I’ve got 4 authors who have scheduled AMAs and no f—ing way to contact them!”
There is no doubt that Reddit will be able to survive the AMAgeddon, but at what cost?
