So... apparently Reddit is imploding.

[Happiness Assassin]

I haven't seen a news story here yet so I thought I would put this here. It looks like some of Reddit's biggest and most popular communities have gone quiet in a protest against admins.

First, some backstory: one of Reddits most popular features in the past has been its Ask Me Anything subreddit where people could go and directly ask various people questions. This feature has had the likes of multiple celebrities, civil rights activists, scientists, a sitting President, and a dude with two schlongs. Needless to say this was a major draw for Reddit, as it was as of a few days ago the fourth most subscribed subreddit. And most of the community outreach was handled by a community liaison named Victoria (or /u/chooter) who coordinated verification and without whom the entire /r/IAMA process would grind to a halt.

So apparently Reddit management, in their infinite wisdom, decided to abruptly fire Victoria for reasons that are unclear to anyone (including her). The admins are so far silent on the matter other than saying they don't discuss an employee being fired (which is odd considering that another employee's firing was discussed fairly prominently <a href=https://archive.is/6QrIL>here by the CEO no less). So as a result /r/IAMA was set to private as they just don't know what to do.

Then the real shit started. Victoria was well liked in the community and was always polite, respectful, and did a nice job of properly arranging things. Well this sudden firing pissed off the mods of some other popular subreddits, notably /r/science, who decided to set their subreddit to private in solidarity. Well, since then it has only snowballed from there. Below is a link to a list of now private subreddits, with the bold ones being default subreddits.

https://np.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bxjyu/list_of_subreddits_suddenly_going_private/

This is nothing short of a shitstorm. My personal feelings on this whole debacle can be summarized below:

Spoiler

Frankly I find the whole thing funny as hell and I am happy to sit on the sidelines with my popcorn. So what are everyone's thoughts on this matter? If you what a better explanation of just what the hell is going on over there, here is a link to a place on Reddit which discusses better than I could. Right now there is a lot of speculation going around, with many more subreddits discussing going private and conspiracy theories abounding about her firing. My favorite is she was fired for the disastrous shitshow of an AMA that Rev. Jesse Jackson did yesterday.

TL;DR Reddit fired a well liked admin and many subreddits have gone private in protest.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

I have no idea if they were right to fire her because they're apparently being mostly silent. So as far as who is right and who is wrong, well that's a bit unclear at the moment.

But it definitely is a shit storm. I happened to stumble on it myself today. Not even a redditor, just look once and a while without an account

 

[Akjosch]

Frankly I find the whole thing funny as hell and I am happy to sit on the sidelines with my popcorn.

You're not alone. Even Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (/u/kn0thing) stated "Popcorn tastes good. [https://archive.is/R2row]" in response to /r/IAmA going private.

*munch* *munch*

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Frankly I find the whole thing funny as hell and I am happy to sit on the sidelines with my popcorn.

You're not alone. Even Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (/u/kn0thing) stated "Popcorn tastes good. [https://archive.is/R2row]" in response to /r/IAmA going private.

*munch* *munch*

r/SubredditDrama has 3 1000+ comment threads on the situation already and a couple others with less comments as well.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Cool story I guess...

If the lady was actually under an employment contract and it got terminated without cause then she can pursue legal action, if they actually didn't even tell her why she got fired that is already 80% of the case won for her. But then these internet things don't usually do legit contracts, probably some wishy washy undetermined agreement that of course keeps people out of obligations.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Cool story I guess...

If the lady was actually under an employment contract and it got terminated without cause then she can pursue legal action, if they actually didn't even tell her why she got fired that is already 80% of the case won for her. But then these internet things don't usually do legit contracts, probably some wishy washy undetermined agreement that of course keeps people out of obligations.

That depends on the contract. Still since California, where Reddit is headquartered(in San Francisco) is an at will employment state... They don't need to give cause to terminate employment. So in this case having no cause for termination is perfectly legal, as well as being basically the safest method of termination.

OT: The only ill that can come of this is Reddit shutting down, which will cause a Reddit exodus. Still we survived the 4chan GG exodus, so we can survive any Reddit exodus.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Not my community but I can't imagine this will pass as quickly and quietly as the administration would like.

 

[Keoul]

Sounds hilarious, hope the escapist does a recap article that documents how it all went down.

 

[Static Jak]

It's such a bizarre move by Reddit Admins. She was arguably the most important person to Reddits third largest sub. It's like they went up and knocked out a load bearing pillar of Reddit without telling anyone who should know beforehand. And somehow they're shocked at the backlash.

My best guess, Victoria was being pressured to move in the direction that the new CEO and Admins have been going with Reddit, bump up commercial aspects and basically monetise the hell out of the whole site. Victoria doesn't seem the sort to play along with that so they just booted her out.

Even if Reddit collapses over all this, it's not a real major loss, something else will just take its place, just like how it went down with Digg.

 

[GladiatorUA]

/r/pics that went dark as a protest go hijacked by admins and re-opened.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

This story is in the Guardian also. They do mention that a now-deleted post on Quora gave a plausable hint as to why the "sacking" occurred. It sounds like they are trying to insert commercials into AMA that Victoria expressed she was not comfortable with. Link here:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/03/reddit-ama-victoria-taylor-subforums-shut-down-protest-sacking

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Doubled post, for some unknown reason.

 

[IceForce]

I don't know who this person is, and yet all of reddit seems to know her.

I feel left out.

 

[Dango]

Can't wait for half of the site to go form 8reddit.

 

[Somekindofgold]

Aaaaaaaaaaand of course Voat is down when they could be sweeping up a new exodus, that is really bad timing on their part.

Anyway, good. I hope Reddit burns to the ground. As soon as Pao took over it took a nosedive into insanity and alienated a lot of their most loyal users. Let its fall be a lesson to all future sites.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Aaaaaaaaaaand of course Voat is down when they could be sweeping up a new exodus, that is really bad timing on their part.

Anyway, good. I hope Reddit burns to the ground. As soon as Pao took over it took a nosedive into insanity and alienated a lot of their most loyal users. Let its fall be a lesson to all future sites.

Can you expand on this? I'm curious.

 

[Somekindofgold]

Aaaaaaaaaaand of course Voat is down when they could be sweeping up a new exodus, that is really bad timing on their part.

Anyway, good. I hope Reddit burns to the ground. As soon as Pao took over it took a nosedive into insanity and alienated a lot of their most loyal users. Let its fall be a lesson to all future sites.

Can you expand on this? I'm curious.

I take it you mean the Pao insanity thing? Yeah why not.

I'm sure you're familiar with the recent banning of 5 'harassing' subreddits? the fat people scandal?

If not, five subreddits were taken down, there was FPH and a couple of others. Pao and her admins claimed it was because the mods hadnt done their job, that, in at least FPH's case, they had doxxed people. The dox in question were thumbnails of imgur employees with a snarky comment underneath. The images had been put up on the site for public viewing by the employees. To further complicate the matter the mods werent just deleted, they were scrubbed, and no evidence of what really went on exists anymore aside from the admins accounts and the accounts of former users who showed up in places like KiA to share their story.

Also banned was the subreddit r/neogafinaction, a subreddit that had broken no rules and was in no way associated with r/neofag, one of the other banned subreddits. r/neogafinaction was a 6 month old subreddit who's only crime was being critical of neogaf.

We still dont have a concrete answer as to why these 5 were picked and places like coontown were left up. The most common theory is that these 5 subreddits had smaller, more spread out populations, while coontown's massive userbase goes to reddit primarily for coontown. You remove coontown and a big chunk of your audience disappears while with the 5 banned subreddits it was less of a risk.

It should also be noted that even after the Charleston shooting and the hysteria following it that coontown is still up, despite the shooter saying that coontown was his favorite place on reddit on social media.

Anyway, this prompted what I call the first reddit exodus. A large chunk of reddit users fled the site after this and took up in places like voat and 8chan, and now this looks like the cause for the second reddit exodus.

But that was only the most recent example of Pao being a nutter. She had done interviews before talking about how she believes wage negotiations are sexist and that she banned them from job interviews and she openly discriminates against anyone who does not share her political views on 'diversity', and before that there was her infamous sexual discrimination case that was..yeah just look it up.

In fact look everything up. I just gave you a bare bones ramble of everything I could remember off the top of my head.

 

[FalloutJack]

I don't even care about Reddit. This is top-quality entertainment, right here.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's such a bizarre move by Reddit Admins. She was arguably the most important person to Reddits third largest sub. It's like they went up and knocked out a load bearing pillar of Reddit without telling anyone who should know beforehand. And somehow they're shocked at the backlash.

This was my impression as well. Without knowing the reasons behind the firing I can't speculate, but it seems like the person they fired was relatively essential to one of Reddit's most popular and important subs. Seems like you'd want a transition plan in place before turfing someone like that.

 

[Michel Henzel]

Whether or not her firing was legal or not it's not really relevant. If you are going to make unpopular moves and then remain completely silent as to why you are making such moves, then you have noone to blame but yourself if the community, of a community driven site, turns against you.

Though them remain silent does give us some awesome stuff as the community will start to make wild speculations and many people will start to go on a digging spree to see what they can find out.

So just get your popcorn out and enjoy the show people.