The sudden and unexplained dismissal of a popular Reddit employee has prompted a blackout across the sprawling discussion board website.

Popular subreddit pages, such as r/Gaming, r/IAmA, r/funny, r/books, r/science, r/music, and r/history, have all been taken private by their moderators in a deliberate message of solidarity to the site’s management.

Most of Reddit’s biggest message boards have been taken private, effectively shutting them down

Game-specific subreddits, such as those for Fallout 4, Destiny, and Grand Theft Auto 5, are affected by the blackout.

At the heart of the issue is the dismissal of the employee u/chooter, who was known internally as Victoria, without explanation.

As explained elsewhere on Reddit, the chain of blackouts began with the one that Victoria moderated, r/IAmA. Other moderators of the famous Q&A page, which has been used by the likes of Barack Obama and Sean Bean, said that Victoria’s dismissal was not communicated properly.

A notice on the site explains: “The mods of /r/IAmA had just found out that without prior warning, /u/chooter, or Victoria, had been released from her position at Reddit. They felt that they, along with the other subreddits that host AMAs, should have been warned beforehand, if only so that they could have someone or something in place to handle the transition. /u/karmanaut went on to say that many of the mods affected by this do not believe that the admins understand how heavily /u/chooter was relied upon to allow AMAs to go smoothly.”

As of June, Reddit was said to have amassed 36 million user accounts.