[M_Grey]

That could just be a matter of attempts at a crackdown failing spectacularly. Reddit mods have been pretty aggressive in trying to prune United stories, without actually blocking or removing them. It can be enough, in other words, just to increase the friction in the system, not to eliminate bad press, but reduce its volume and persistence.

[pmiller2]

What steps is Reddit taking to "prune" these stories? Do you mean preventing them from hitting the front page?

[M_Grey]

Aggressively enforcing rules of various subreddits, no actual skullduggery that I've seen at least. So, while normally a subreddit might allow a repost, or a topic to be covered by more than one article, they crack down hard on that. In a sub like WorldNews they were being extremely quick and harsh with "US Internal Politics" for another example, which effectively kills the post.

In essence, it's just how police operate; if you were subjected to every reasonable measure police could bring to bear on you, all of the time, your life would be a misery; A legally sanctioned, totally acceptable misery, but the power of "discretion" keeps that from being the reality for "acceptable" groups.