Reddit is imploding on itself right now and no one knows what to do with themselves. The situation on the site right now just illustrates the entitlement and overblown view the community members (Redditors) have of themselves.
Reddit is a community where anyone can upload content and interact with other users. There are subreddits (mini communities) with pretty much any topic you can imagine, from sports to history to movies.
It all started with AMA. The subreddit stood for “Ask Me Anything” and was most well-known for having celebrities answer questions from community members and was meant to be more of a casual one-on-one without being vetted and censored by PR people.
Reddit employee Victoria Taylor served as a liaison between the subject and the community and helped the subject understand what to do and what Reddit is. Smaller subreddits also hold their own AMAs, and Taylor helped out with those as well. On July 2, she was abruptly fired with no explanation, which was the catalyst for a large-scale protest over the way Reddit admins (paid employees) treat moderators (volunteers who are in charge of particular subreddits). Large subreddits were going private, meaning the average Redditor couldn’t access them anymore. With Taylor gone, there are no backups in place to run AMAs.
Now, as befitting Reddit, there’s a bunch of speculation and piggybacking off other people’s unfounded assumptions. There are no real answers. Allegedly the admins don’t listen to the moderators’ suggestions or something. It’s not that clear. There are also a lot of grumblings about interim CEO Ellen Pao, whom Redditors hate for such vague, unfounded reasons as “She’s power hungry” and “she’s changing Reddit.” As far as I can tell, the most significant change she’s made is to enforce Reddit’s harassment policy, leading to bans of five hate-based subreddits such as Fat People Hate, and ultimately led to Redditors decrying their lack of free speech and ability to bully without consequences.
Everyone immediately assumed Taylor was fired due to some kind of Reddit mismanagement. I agree it’s unlikely that Taylor was fired due to her own incompetence – she was loved in the community and good at her job. In addition, her departure has (obviously) totally thrown Reddit into chaos and it’s impossible to do the AMAs without her. However, no one knows anything. Reddit isn’t speaking and Taylor isn’t speaking. A screenshot from Quora, a website where people answer questions, said that Taylor was fired because she was resistant to changes the Reddit community wouldn’t like, such as video AMAs. Everyone immediately jumped on this and repeated it as truth. However it was later refuted and doesn’t make sense anyway – video AMAs already exist on Reddit’s YouTube channel.
The best thing about the whole drama is how seriously everyone is taking it, like it’s the next Watergate scandal. Reddit has always seen itself as a close-knit community that is there for each other always – conveniently turning a blind eye to the hatred of Muslims, black people, and women. They believe passionately in their right to free speech – which they take to mean as their ability to talk about anything and do anything without consequences. Reddit’s lack of censorship has led to communities devoted to being racist toward black people, pictures of dead children, and upskirt pictures. Apparently if anyone speaks out about these (such as during the campaign to ban Violentacrez, who was a moderator for the subreddit for upskirt pictures and underage girls, among others), it’s literally destroying freedom.
Despite having millions of diverse users, Reddit has always been an insular community – they kind of have an us versus them mentality and sometimes unironically refer to themselves as the Reddit army. Since the site has a bit of a learning curve for new users – it’s full of inside jokes – it’s seen as an exclusive club. However, no one outside Reddit cares about this drama. It’s kind of like being in the middle of some kind of high school conflict: it’s so important for the people involved, but from the outside looks ridiculous. One user asked what the celebrities who met Victoria think of the whole situation – as if a big name celebrity would care about the firing of one PR person among hundreds they probably deal with.
The other Reddit trait the drama has brought into sharp focus is its entitlement – most users don’t understand that Reddit is a business that has to make decisions in order to sustain itself, and they’re not going to take into account the opinion of some 14-year-old posting memes to the Pics subreddit. Reddit is not a democracy where everything is voted on and tallied up. Reddit is a corporation. As an example of the entitlement, one user demanded that Reddit disclose why Taylor was fired because otherwise it apparently looks bad.
Other users were quick to point out that typically businesses don’t disclose why an employee was fired, because that can open them up to civil lawsuits.
Maybe there are problems with how the Reddit administration handles the site. I’m not a big enough user to know or care. What I hope comes out of this whole thing is users understand that they are not entitled to have a say in every decision and they should calm down and get their facts before flinging around accusations. But that’s unlikely to happen. I’ve browsed a lot of different threads on this issue and I’ve only seen two comments saying the situation is overblown.
