Sections of Reddit Go Dark After Popular Employee Fired
Victoria Taylor, the site's director of talent, was unexpectedly let go this week after two years.
By Chloe Albanesius
https://www.pcmag.com/news/sections-of-reddit-go-dark-after-popular-employee-fired
Reddit is in disarray today, as many popular subreddits have been shut down in protest over the firing of a popular Reddit employee.
Victoria Taylor, the site's director of talent, was unexpectedly let go this week after two years with the company. Neither she nor Reddit have publicly addressed why she was dismissed. Rumors have pointed to everything from her reluctance to embrace new "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) publicity schemes to a recent disastrous AMA with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, but nothing has been confirmed.
Reddit, however, apparently underestimated Taylor's popularity. According to Gawker, she orchestrated the site's AMAs, which have attracted Q&As with Bill Gates and even President Obama, among others. But she was also very engaged with the community, so when she was axed, they joined forces to shut down popular sections of the site in solidarity.
Gawker has been keeping tabs on the subreddits that are currently inaccessible. Most notable, of course, is the AMA one. But sections dealing with gaming, gadgets, and more have also now been set to private.
In a post last night, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said that "we get that losing Victoria has a significant impact on the way you manage your community. I'd really like to understand how we can help solve these problems, because I know r/IAMA thrived before her and will thrive after."
That didn't sit too well with members of the community, and Ohanian backtracked somewhat in a follow-up post earlier this morning. "First, I'm sorry for how we handled communicating change to the AMA team this morning," he wrote. "I take responsibility for that. We should have made a post to r/DefaultMods announcing the transition and contacted the affected mods teams right after it happened and clearly articulated how there would not be a disruption with scheduled AMAs and those communications would now happen via [email protected] as we find a full-time replacement."
Priority No. 1 is getting subreddits back online, he said.
"Your message was received loud and clear. The communication between Reddit and the moderators needs to improve dramatically," he wrote. "We will work closely with you all going forward to ensure events like today don't happen again. At this point, however, the blackout has served its purpose, and now it's time to get Reddit functioning again. I know many of you are still upset. We will continue to work through these issues with you all, but redditors don't deserve to be punished any further over an issue that is ultimately between Reddit and the moderators."
Does Reddit Need Terrible People to Survive?
Ohanian pointed mods to the krispykrackers, who will "be point person for moderator issues."
Taylor, meanwhile, tweeted her thanks to supporters. "Thank you to everyone for their good wishes and support. Love you guys," she said.
Reddit has had its issues in recent years, from the ill-advised effort to find the Boston marathon bombers to the posting of hacked celebrity photos last year. Sections of the site, however, have long been havens for terrible people, something interim CEO Ellen Pao has tried to combat, but that too did not sit well with some Redditors.
About Chloe Albanesius
Chloe has led PCMag's news coverage for more than 10 years, editing and writing stories about the innovations that have shaped the last decade and the companies behind them. She also oversees the site's how-to coverage. Before joining PCMag.com, Chloe was a reporter covering tech policy on Capitol Hill for The National Journal's Technology Daily and financial IT for Incisive Media in NYC. She's held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.
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