12 Craziest Twitter Reactions To Reddit Going Dark

Reddit is in a tailspin following the controversial firing of communications director Victoria Taylor. Taylor was responsible for coordinating the site’s “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) forum and was well liked by users and moderators. Her sudden firing has sparked a more general protest against what moderators regard as a lack of administrative support. Yesterday evening the AMA thread (/r/IAmA) was made private; now, well over 200 other subreddits have shut down in solidarity. With so much of Reddit locked down, Redditors have done the logical thing and taken to airing their grievances on Twitter. Their Twitter reactions to Reddit going dark range from the amused to the frantic, with everyone seemingly in agreement on one point: It’s a complete mess out there.

The reasons for Taylor’s firing are still uncertain, but it clearly was a surprise to the AMA moderators. Yesterday AMA moderator /u/karmanaut posted an explanation of why they chose to set the AMA subreddit to “private” (essentially shutting it down for most users), writing, “We all had the rug ripped out from under us and feel betrayed.” The mod went on explain that Taylor was vital to the smooth functioning of the AMAs and that the Reddit administrators had not enacted measures to help the subreddit transition to working without her. Since then, many prominent subreddits have also gone private, including /r/art, /r/funny, /r/history, /r/videos, /r/movies, and /r/askreddit, as well as smaller ones like /r/treessuckingonthings (Do I want to know what that is?). A “recap” of what is going on by a Redditor named /u/Gilgamesh emphasizes that the protest isn’t only about Victoria Taylor’s firing:

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.

Many Redditors are discussing this implosion on Twitter. Some are angry and upset; Others just want to sit back and watch the world burn: