All The Stories About Reddit We Couldn't Fit On The Front Page
Late Thursday night, Reddit's r/IAmA went private in protest of the mysterious termination of AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor — effectively blocking all users from visiting one of the website's most popular subreddits. In short, the Reddit community flipped out, prompting a wave of subreddit blackouts, a petition to remove CEO Ellen Pao and a proposed boycott. Here's a recap of the coverage that we'll be periodically updating as new developments come in.
AMAGEDDON BEGINS
A Friday Blackout And An Apology
The move affected nearly 300 individual discussion areas […] In a telephone interview Friday, Reddit's interim chief executive, Ellen Pao, said, "I'm sorry we let our community down yesterday." She added, "We should have informed our community moderators about the transition and worked through it with them."
DETAILS OF SHADY FIRINGS EMERGE
A Former Community Moderator, Fired For Having Cancer
In his lengthy post, /u/Dacvak describes being hired by reddit in 2011 only to be diagnosed with leukemia soon after, delaying his relocation to their headquarters in San Francisco. He credits former General Manager Erik Martin and former CEO Yishan Wong with allowing him to keep his job and work remotely in spite of his lengthy battle with the disease and eventual relapse.
As he was finally preparing to move to San Francisco in 2014 (a new company policy no longer allowed working remotely), /u/Dacvak met with Pao where, he claims, it was decided that he'd be rejoining the Community Management team.
"I pleaded with Ellen to let me stay… She finally stated that if I were to get permission from my doctor stating that it was okay for me to move to SF and begin work, that I would be able to come back… Unfortunately, a day later, she had called and once again stated that I was fired, stating that work would be too demanding for my health."
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THE risks Of A VOLUNTEER WORKFORCE
A Growing Moderator Problem
Startups like Uber have an independent contractor problem. Companies like Facebook have a user privacy problem. Twitter has a growth problem.
And Reddit — no surprise — has a moderator problem. And it's a very loud and noisy one.
The social news service has thousands of loyal, unpaid moderators who produce and curate the lion's share of content on the site. But a staff firing and the controversy that erupted thereafter yesterday has moderators of some of the most influential and important parts of the site closing off their sections in protest, posing a serious problem for Reddit's future.
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IT'S NOT EASY POLICING THE FRONT PAGE OF THE INTERNET
An Anonymous Moderator Speaks Out
The moderator, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, quit her volunteer post months ago because the hate was becoming too much to handle. She believed Taylor was one of the few people in the company helping to limit the "spew of hate directed at everyone."
"At first being a mod was fantastic—especially because it's usually about a subject you care about," she said. "When I first started, I was so thrilled. It was a great community of people talking and sharing information and ideas. By the end, it was a total circus—with folks who seem bent on posting more and more incendiary, homophobic, racist things, just for the sake of it."
"I stopped moderating because it was a pain in the ass to be a human being on Reddit," she said.
FIGHTING THE PAO-ER
Redditors Petitioning For CEO Ellen Pao's Resignation
More than 150,000 Reddit users have signed an online petition calling for Ellen Pao, the site's interim chief executive, to step down. The petition arose after Victoria Taylor, the director of talent who managed the site's popular Ask Me Anything (AMA) subreddit, was fired.
