I'm going to offer a wild suggestion - What if reddit is being purposefully dismantled to break up the social hive it represents? Is it possible that current events are he fruition of a purposeful strategy?
The whole dust up over /r/fph and the few other little subs kinda horrified me. I think reddit has often veered too far into laxness (the LONG existence of /r/jailbait) and there is still an amazing ton of blatant rule violations going on.
The only problem I had with the /r/fph thing was how inconsistently enforced it was. It seemed like a ban against a relatively small group so they wouldn't have to deal with pissing off one of the bigger problem subs. It ended up looking like a fake token gesture.
If that is what is happening, is that what the owners want? Or is that what leadership wants? The leadership has very little money sunk into reedit, but the owners have a lot more.
I'm sure leadership is willing to gamble that they can disrupt the hive without killing it. But will the owners continue to go down that road?
With billions (and billions) of dollars being poured into this year's election cycle, it makes sense for the string-pullers to dismantle any vestige of true grassroots organizing. It seems like the "real" money would be invested in disrupting organic organization and favoring controlled and curated organization that favors their whim. I just can't get this damn tinfoil cap off my head.