Reddit's response about the actions they took against the subreddits (note: r/mildly interesting DID NOT encourage nsfw content and their suspensions and removal have been revoked by a diff admin)
minnieo@kbin.social to 
Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 238 points – 
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Reddit is totally justified in this. The users are actively and maliciously trying to hurt Reddit. However, this is in response to many many completely unjustifiable actions from Reddit. Mostly the lies.
If they had just come out and said "we're killing the API in 6-12 months", as others before them have done, they would have seen much less pushback, but they had to lie over and over again about "not killing 3rd party apps" and "working with developers".
A dog is justified to snap at a toddler if the toddler jabs it in the eye, the toddlers parents will still want the dog put down.
When tens-of-thousands-strong communities are voting overwhelmingly in favor of these "malicious" actions maybe we should look at what they are responding to.
Yes it's intended to hurt Reddit. How else are protests supposed to be actually meaningful or result in any actual negotiating leverage? These subreddits have power in their numbers and they're just using it.
Yes I mentioned what they were responding to in the comment you replied to.
The hypocritcal thing here is that Worldpolitics did this years ago and reddit didn't care.
What rules did these subreddits break in order for Reddit's actions to be justified here?
I don't know that they are breaking any rules, but regardless they are malicious in intent, which is really what matters. And if you're going to argue otherwise, you're being completely disingenuous.
I'm happy that this finally created enough drama to shed enough users to make reddit alternatives viable. It's a good think they exploded so spectacularly and Im glad that mods are fighting back because the subreddit drama created again will cause reddit to shake off more users.
That said its reddit's right to close their api, and I dont even begrudge spez for wanting to sell out for a fat check. It would have still rubbed a lot of redditors wrong and the result would shake off a lot of users, but if they handled it a little more tactfully they could have gotten less heat. Still despite being technically correct and despite making things worse by being dipshits I cant imagine it would have blown over all the way.
This is what happens when we centralize our entire message board and community and fan experience in one 1st party controlled private business.