Photo: Reddit

Reddit’s community is falling apart at the seams after the site’s popular Ask Me Anything (iAMA) feature went offline.

The reason? Reddit’s director of communications Victoria Taylor (/u/chooter) was reportedly let go, and subreddit moderators are revolting in protest.

Taylor was responsible for running the Ask Me Anything sessions that celebrities like Barack Obama, Channing Tatum, Amy Poehler, Julian Assange, and many others took part in.

Gizmodo Australia’s Campbell Simpson explains:

Victoria — all of Reddit’s /r/IAmA forum refers to her by her first name, since she is (or was) an integral and highly visible part of the most important and high-profile AMAs — started working as an employee of Reddit in June of 2013 in the role of Director of Communications. She was popular enough with /r/IAmA users that she even ran her own AMA, a cached version of which is available here.

As a result of her dismissal, some of Reddit’s most popular and famous subreddits have been locked down. One Reddit user has posted this list of the threads that have gone dark, and it includes some of the site’s most popular areas, including /r/science, /r/todayilearned, and /r/gadgets.

Moderators have been posting similar messages on the front pages of the subreddits. This is from /r/science:

Due to an unexpected Reddit administrative personnel change /r/science is temporarily private so that we can resolve the situation, our apologizes for any disruption this may cause.

Below is a screenshot of (taken from here) of the huge list of subreddits that are going dark:

It’s completely unclear why Taylor has left Reddit, but user I_AM_A_FUNNY_GUY, who published the list of subreddits gone dark, speculated it was because she asked “very tough and very true questions” in a recent interview with Jesse Jackson.

“Reddit was born as an open place where anything goes. Where government, corporations and bleeding heart politically correct groups couldn’t censor what was happening in the world around us. What happened today with Victoria being fired because she let the very tough and very true questions get asked to Jesse Jackson is a travesty and a disgrace. I’m glad there are that many subs showing solidarity in protest of Victoria’s removal.”

Read more at Gizmodo Australia.

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