Outraged Reddit users today put the site into virtual lockdown in protest at the sacking of a popular employee.
The dismissal of Victoria Taylor, who oversaw the ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) section, came without any explanation, according to an explanatory post on Reddit.
The post said: “No-one, excluding a select few of the administrative team, knows precisely why /u/chooter [Taylor’s username] was removed as an admin.”
Many found themselves locked out of sub-reddits today
According to the BBC, the protests were led by volunteer moderators of the section, who said that without Taylor, the sub-reddit would not be able to function properly.
Many high-profile figures have taken part in AMAs, including Barack Obama, Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, actors Idris Elba and Bill Murray, internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Reddit is one of the most widely used sites on the internet with over 7.5 billion page views a month, according to the BBC.
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According the Reddit post, Taylor would help to coordinate these sessions and help those taking part, particularly if they were not used to using computers.
In protest, many sections of the site were set to private by moderators, effectively locking many out, in an incident dubbed AMA-geddon.
Some Twitter users certainly seemed to think it was bad news for the site…