Victoria Taylor's firing & the 2015 AMA blackout (‘AMAgeddon’)
July 2015
The abrupt firing of AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor triggered a revolt in which moderators of r/IAmA and more than a thousand other subreddits went private in protest.
What happened
Victoria Taylor (/u/chooter) coordinated Reddit's flagship 'Ask Me Anything' interviews, helping celebrities and public figures verify and run sessions. In early July 2015, during Ellen Pao's tenure as interim CEO, she was abruptly fired with little explanation to the volunteer moderators who relied on her.
In response, the moderators of r/IAmA set the subreddit private, and within hours more than a thousand other subreddits followed in solidarity — an event users dubbed 'AMAgeddon'. The protest reflected long-simmering frustration over poor communication between Reddit's staff and the unpaid moderators who keep the site running. The episode contributed to mounting pressure that culminated in Pao's resignation later that month.
Impact
The blackout was the first time Reddit's volunteer moderators demonstrated, at scale, that they could take the site dark — a template repeated far more dramatically in the 2023 API protests. It exposed Reddit's dependence on, and frequent neglect of, its unpaid moderation workforce, and it intensified scrutiny of the company's leadership and communication practices.