Reddit has to make a lot of decisions, some were soon after she joined. Not sure CEOs of social media company get involved in making that decision personally, rather than name people who would -- Pao might be an exception, though.
From all the subreddits that were closed, I’d be hard-pressed to name one that I felt contributed to free speech.
I don't know enough about the situation to take a definite position.
However, it seems to me that free speech is intended to protect the expression of unpopular viewpoints. In that case, I think that we should protect people's right to advocate that suicide, shoplifting, or advocating watching people die should be legal.
However, as long as those things are not legal then it doesn't necessarily violate free speech to restrict the practices themselves or information on how to engage in the practices.
Actually spent quite a while going through the list of banned subs to eliminate contentious ones, gotta make commenters work for it :)
They are a US based website subject to those laws, even if those words posted on their site didn't violate laws, it's entirely legal for them to censor at will for any reason they deem ok.
In most cases, the subreddits openly advocated for crimes, often violent, which I understand is the type of speech that isn’t protected by even the most relaxed definition of free speech.