Monetization. That's what it's going to come down to. Let's logically deduce this: well loved employee, great work ethic, great quality of work, suddenly dismissed. Suddenly lost her mind? Totally unlikely. Quit? Not without two weeks notice, that's not how Victoria rolled. Objected to management? We know, despite the lack of proof, that this is probably what went down.

So what is management trying to pull? The answer is obvious: Victoria worked solely with AMAs, reddit has a problem turning a profit. Monetized AMAs. Now, taking a look at this conversation between /u/kn0thing and /r/science, we see that /u/kn0thing is evading mod questions on who they are working, even though he says that only one person is handling it. Why? This is likely for two reasons: 1) he wants to prevent a situation (like this one) where a single employee has huge control of the website and 2) he wants reddit to back away from the personalized front that we used to have and put up a Fortune500-esque wall of obscurity between staff and users. This wall of obscurity can and likely will be exploited to prevent mods from seeing a third party performing the AMA instead of the actual person, and remove verification from the hands of the mods. The reddit admins will just say "they are verified" and expect that the show will go on.

We can already see that the admins are shying away from increased contact and communication, which was promised just yesterday. The /r/science mods have been left with their hands in the air trying to set up a meeting with Stephen Hawking, and management has not provided any reasons as to why AMAs are now being handled by a team. (Note that the decision to handle AMAs as a team is separate from the decision to let Victoria go; do not let the mods tell you that they are the same, and that they can't comment on the former issue because of the latter.) So the endgame; it looks like AMAs will eventually be entirely handled by reddit admins. The mods keep repeating, "you can't do this without us!" But that is exactly what reddit is going to do. Think about it; AMAs are reddit's largest attraction. If you look at the official ten years of reddit video, you can see three things: statistics, memes, and AMAs. It's a major "feature" of the website. The admins seemed to have been trying to execute a takeover of IAMA: that would explain why they stated "a team" would be handling them now instead of Victoria. The way forward, though not in plaintext, is clear.

TLDR: You're going to see sponsored AMAs, and IAMA mods may begin to lose control.