So back in the day, r/IAmA used to actually get really cool people to come do interviews on a pretty regular basis: celebrities, authors, activists, politicians, prominent scientists. They even got President Obama to do an AMA, while he was sitting US president! (For a long time, it was the most upvoted thread in reddit history.)
And I don’t just mean once or twice a year, these interviews were happening multiple times a month. Users could ask whatever they wanted, no matter how off the wall, blunt, or challenging, and the interviewees would usually answer almost all of the top questions.
It was all thanks to Victoria. She was the reddit employee in charge of reaching out to celebrities to do AMAs, and then helping them get set up and navigating reddit for them when the time came. It was one of the coolest features of reddit, and it was all thanks to her.
So naturally, of course, they fired Victoria on the flimsiest of excuses.
Why? We’re still not 100% sure-- reddit never officially explained. But the leading theory is that reddit wanted to change the way IAmAs were run to limit users’ ability to ask hard questions. Ever hear about the Woody Harrelson IAmA disaster (“Can we please focus on Rampart, people?”)? Maybe reddit’s plan was to limit the kinds of questions users could ask, to reduce the odds of PR disasters like that. Who knows.
Whatever their plan was, though, it failed. Killing the thing that made IAmAs so cool compared to normal interviews also completely killed users’ interests in them. And without Victoria to reach out to celebrities and help them with the IAmA process any more, the rate at which celebs would show up on site to do AmAs tanked.
Nowadays, you’re lucky to get one AmA with someone people have actually heard of a year, and even then they’ll usually only answer a handful of cherry-picked questions. For all intents and purposes, the feature is dead.
Victoria’s firing coincided with the last time Reddit was prominently in mainstream media. This was back in 2015 when Ellen Pao’s controversial tenure as CEO led to questionable subreddits being expunged from the site.
Who’s Victoria?
So back in the day, r/IAmA used to actually get really cool people to come do interviews on a pretty regular basis: celebrities, authors, activists, politicians, prominent scientists. They even got President Obama to do an AMA, while he was sitting US president! (For a long time, it was the most upvoted thread in reddit history.)
And I don’t just mean once or twice a year, these interviews were happening multiple times a month. Users could ask whatever they wanted, no matter how off the wall, blunt, or challenging, and the interviewees would usually answer almost all of the top questions.
It was all thanks to Victoria. She was the reddit employee in charge of reaching out to celebrities to do AMAs, and then helping them get set up and navigating reddit for them when the time came. It was one of the coolest features of reddit, and it was all thanks to her.
So naturally, of course, they fired Victoria on the flimsiest of excuses.
Why? We’re still not 100% sure-- reddit never officially explained. But the leading theory is that reddit wanted to change the way IAmAs were run to limit users’ ability to ask hard questions. Ever hear about the Woody Harrelson IAmA disaster (“Can we please focus on Rampart, people?”)? Maybe reddit’s plan was to limit the kinds of questions users could ask, to reduce the odds of PR disasters like that. Who knows.
Whatever their plan was, though, it failed. Killing the thing that made IAmAs so cool compared to normal interviews also completely killed users’ interests in them. And without Victoria to reach out to celebrities and help them with the IAmA process any more, the rate at which celebs would show up on site to do AmAs tanked.
Nowadays, you’re lucky to get one AmA with someone people have actually heard of a year, and even then they’ll usually only answer a handful of cherry-picked questions. For all intents and purposes, the feature is dead.
Obama’s AMA was eventually overtaken in upvotes by some random guy saying ‘Fuck spez’
Wonderfully explained.
Reddit was never the same after Victoria. That might actually be the start of the decline of that cursed website. It was perfect back then.
Right up there with the guy with two dicks.
He would be great with the lady with two vaginas
Always wondered if those two ever met.
Victoria’s firing coincided with the last time Reddit was prominently in mainstream media. This was back in 2015 when Ellen Pao’s controversial tenure as CEO led to questionable subreddits being expunged from the site.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/30/reddit-ellen-pao?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Sounds like they’ve been shooting themselves in the foot for longer than I’d thought, it’s a wonder that site isn’t dead already…
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33787004
TLDR; Ms Taylor co-ordinated the 'Ask me Anything" forum, a popular section of Reddit run in conjunction with volunteer moderators
Very popular Ex-IAmA admin from back then.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2015/07/03/ask-me-anything-except-why-victoria-taylor-was-fired-from-reddit/