Reddit users lock up site in protest over employee's firing

The social news website Reddit is seeing a revolt among its users as they protest against the firing of the administrator behind the success of the site's popular Ask Me Anything interviews. 

Reddit bills itself as the "front page of the internet" and its millions of users are integral to its success. They're the ones who submit the links and photos to the site, who vote on which content gets featured and who moderate its sections, called subreddits. 

On Thursday, after news broke that Reddit had fired director of talent Victoria Taylor, the employee who had been running the Ask Me Anything sessions, the moderators of the subreddit where the AMAs appeared made that section private as they sorted out how to proceed. 

"We had a number of AMAs scheduled for today that Victoria was supposed to help with, and they are all left absolutely high and dry," wrote a Reddit user who goes by the user name karmanaut, one of the moderators of the subreddit.

Reddit users were left in the dark as to why Taylor had been let go. So, in protest, several other subreddits were also made private by their moderators, removing them from Reddit's front page and making them invisible to most of the internet. 

Some of the sections that went private, such as /r/movies, /r/gaming and /r/technology, have millions of subscribers each. 

The moderators of other subreddits, such as /r/askscience, opted not to go private, but instead wrote posts expression their frustration. 

"We have not gone private because our team has chosen to keep the subreddit open for our readers, but instead stating our disapproval of how events have been handled currently as well as the past," wrote the moderator MockDeath. 

An explanation of Reddit's actions and statements, and of the protest by its users, appears on Reddit in the section /r/OutOfTheLoop.