Turmoil at reddit
You may have noticed that some of the subreddits you frequent are inaccessible at the moment. No, the site wasn't hacked, though it is turning on itself in protest of the firing of Victoria Taylor, a high-ranking administrator and Director of Talent who coordinated the sometimes complicated process of reddit's Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions.
Known by the user handle /u/chooter, it appears that Taylor was fired without being given notice. This prompted moderators from several other subreddits to lock things down by making them private, thereby disabling access by the Internet community at large. Considering the large amount of traffic that reddit enjoys on a daily basis, this is a big deal.
Taylor played a crucial role at reddit. While running AMA might not seem like that big of a deal, she had several responsibilities, such as booking talent, verifying that celebrities were legit, making sure that AMA guests answered questions themselves rather than handing things over to a third party (like a PR person), and helping computer-illiterate folks, both by phone and sometimes in person. It's a process, and Taylor worked behind the scenes to make sure everything went smoothly.
There were rumblings that an AMA with Jesse Jackson that turned bad was the cause for her termination, but it appears that's not the case. According to TechCrunch, a deleted answer on Quora provided some insight into her dismissal.
If the answer on Quora is true, then a clash with management is what sparked this whole thing. Apparently, reddit management was pushing Taylor to do a bunch of commercial things around AMAs, like adding video. Supposedly, Taylor resisted certain ideas, so management decided to abruptly fire her and eliminate her position altogether.
"They really underestimated how much moderators relied on her and cared about her," the Quora answer read.
After that, all hell broke loose. It eventually led to reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian telling moderators that their message was heard loud and clear with a promise to communicate better in the future, and that it's time to turn the subforums back on.
Most reddit subforums have been made public again, such as /r/gaming and /r/technology, though some remain dark (at the time of this writing) like /r/movies. There's also a petition circulating on Change.org for reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao to step down from her position. It currently has over 22,000 signatures.
Update 7/6/15
As of this morning, the Change.org petition calling for Pao's dismissal has ballooned to over 160,000 signatures.
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