OK, and why would Reddit go along with that? IAmA was one of the most monetizable parts of Reddit, and it needed a full-time staff member to work. The site was already vaguely unhappy with the admins (though maybe those folks were leaving). Jesse Jackson's personal support doesn't mean much to Reddit, I'm pretty sure. Even if it made sense for him to want Victoria fired, which I'm not sure it does, and even if nobody at Reddit felt qualms about firing their coworker, it still makes no business sense why this was the right move for Reddit.

Quoting the International Business Times: "The AMA in question, which took place just two days before Taylor's firing was revealed, was widely regarded to be nothing short of a disaster. When the top question on the AMA calls the person answering questions 'an immoral, hate-filled race baiter that has figured out how to manipulate the political system for your own gain', you know you are in trouble. [...] However the suggestion that this was the reason for Taylor's firing does seem tenuous at best, and outright ridiculous in reality." There are some more plausible reasons in that story. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reddit-revolt-why-was-popular-direc...

"[T]he suggestion that this was the reason for Taylor's firing does seem tenuous at best, and outright ridiculous in reality." That is an assertion, and one without any argument or evidence. The other two theories mentioned by the article (anti-relocation, anti-commercialization) aren't consistent with such an abrupt and poorly handled firing.

Now why would Reddit fire Victoria over the AMA? There are many _possible_ reasons. Here are some speculations.

One, no company wants to be the target of Reverend Jackson or his supporters complaining that they treated him in a disrespectful or racist fashion. Look at how some of the various tech diversity controversies have played out, and how quickly. Reddit may well have worried that _not_ firing Victoria could have put them in a "Reddit is racist" cross-hairs that could quickly have spun out of control. Especially given how much of exactly that sort of material is floating around on various subreddits. Given how those controversies can roll, reasoning like this may even have been in some sense correct. Lose the whole company in a Twitter storm? Or fire a popular employee and irritate a bunch of mods?

Two, CEO Pao is on record talking about the importance of diversity at Reddit. It may very well be that she felt the AMA was cross-wise her own values, and those she wants to promote at Reddit.

Three, CEO Pao may also regard the Reverend and his supporters as important allies for purposes of her own, apart from her role as Reddit's CEO. She's certainly out there as interested in diversity issues, and admired by many for that. It isn't hard to imagine that she would be concerned about that image.

Four, others at Reddit may have felt the AMA didn't represent their values. Silicon Valley is notoriously progressive, and when dealing with political questions people often don't think straight. The conflict between "AMAs can be rough" and "Reverend Jackson deserves more respect than that" creates cognitive dissonance. That makes decision-making very hard. Add in some pressure from Jackson or his people -- whom many in Silicon Valley _want_ to perceive as reasonable and intelligent folks, and exposed to a lot of unreasonable criticism -- and good choices start to get difficult.

We don't _know_ anything, of course. The basic point is, the Jackson AMA created a _political_ situation for Reddit. Political decision-making is already hard, and the thinking about it easily confused. Reddit may have made a political choice driven by business concerns. Or it may have made political choices based on its employees personal agendas or outlooks.

Or, the timing of the firing and the AMA were completely coincidental.

Even if you grant one through four, the role of AMA facilitator is incredibly monetarily important for Reddit, and also incredibly politically important for Reddit as a platform. Victoria was their one paid control of AMA. The mods (as we saw) are volunteers and answer to nobody. Reddit's management isn't dumb, they know that.

(Speculation one also seems somewhat unlikely given that, for instance, /r/coontown is still around. They'd be an obvious scapegoat if you wanted to curry favor with Jackson or with the Twitter folks who were already saying that Reddit was racist. And they're far less valuable to Reddit than an employee was.)

What they could have done, if they really wanted, was to trump up some charges against the AMA mods (perhaps for not moderating that AMA well) and replace some or all of the mod team. That would have placated Jackson, or Twitter, or Pao's self-image, or whomever, while cementing control of AMA in the future. Reddit continued to have an employee involved in running AMAs, and she could have been pressured into keeping AMAs reflect the message Reddit wants to send.

So even if someone (Jackson, Pao, someone else at Reddit) felt like Something Needed To Be Done in response to that AMA, it's far from obvious that firing someone would have been a response that occurred to them. What we're assuming here is not just poor decision-making blinded by ideology / political exigency / whatever, but poor decision-making in the face of other, obvious, obviously better options. That's what makes it so hard to believe.

We know that Reddit already implemented a move-or-get-fired policy. We know that Reddit is bad at handling employee termination (and lots of companies are, to be fair). We know that, fairly recently, Reddit terminated an employee for not moving, and handled it very abruptly, too, without contacting the subreddit they were assigned to work with. "Management decided to fire the employee for standard company-politics reasons, and did a bad job of it" seems perfectly within reason.

Or, you've generated Scenario Five: Reddit wanted to remove a mod in connection with the Jackson AMA, Victoria refused to cooperate, they fired her instead.

But I would definitely agree that what looks like conspiracy generally turns out to be stupidity.