If you visit Reddit today, you may notice that many of the discussion board's most popular sections or 'subreddits' cannot be accessed. They include the site's movies, gaming, videos, books and history 'default' subreddits, along with many more high-profile areas with millions of subscribers each. So, what's going on?
It all revolves around some recent drama concerning the site's incredibly successful 'Ask Me Anything' subreddit r/IAmA. This is the area of the site where well known individuals and celebrities answer questions from reddit users.
One of the main people behind recent success of Ask Me Anything has been Victoria Taylor, hired as the site's Director of Communications in 2013. One of the most visible and popular members of Reddit's administration team, Victoria managed AMA's as well as serving as a key liason between the site's admin team, and moderators & users.
Taylor was let go from reddit earlier this week, for reasons that are not yet clear. In a post on reddit, she simply said she is currently 'dazed' and hopes to stay in the PR field.
Reddit itself has said the company does not comment on specific employees, while some users have speculated the alleged dismissal may have had something to do with a disastorous AMA with Reverend Jesse Jackson. However, it is only speculation: at the moment, moderators and users are in the dark over the whole situation.
It's that lack of communication more so than the firing itself which seems to have triggered this mass 'shutdown' by subreddit moderators.
As a moderator writes on the site's 'Out of the Loop' subreddit, "as much as Victoria is loved, this reaction is not all a result of her departure: there is a feeling among many of the moderators of reddit that the admins do not respect the work that is put in by the thousands of unpaid volunteers who maintain the communities of the 9,656 active subreddits, which they feel is expressed by, among other things, the lack of communication between them and the admins, and their disregard of the thousands of mods who keep reddit's communities going."
In a post on the r/science subreddit - which was temporarily shut down but has since reopened - a moderator writes, "admin support has been crucial to the /r/science AMA program, and unfortunately these recent changes had the consequence of limiting that support, impacting several AMAs. By changing the status of /r/science to private briefly, we hoped to enable both Admin and the moderation to team to focus their energies on resolving these issues in a timely manner."
In an open letter, moderators have offered their reasons for the shutdown, and explained the changes they would like to see take place across the site.
The whole situation has seen longer-term tensions and disagreements between management and the moderators/users who keep the site running come to a head. Given that many of the site's major traffic sources have now been made private, it certainly seems as if management of the 'Internet's front page' will be unable to ignore or dismiss the concerns for much longer.
Some users, however, are taking advantage of the situation. As one currently popular thread is titled,'75% of reddit going dark means this is probably my best chance of ever getting to the frontpage'.
