More likely investors are getting restless and want to see some return. In these cases management feels it needs to have things under its control and starts removing power bases from lower down the org chart so that everything stays on message. AMA is Reddit's only viable asset so having it under control of someone who isn't part of the management clique is unthinkable.
Usually these attempts fail and the company is dead within 24 months having burned the village in an attempt to save the village.
However a counter-point is that its quite possible that they are trying to pivot reddit into a mainstream site, and thus are more than willing to burn most of the current user base.
They don't need/want hard-hitting questions during AMA's, nor do they want freaky fetish subreddits, nor long winded post describing the intricacies of the Federal Reserve.
They want cat pictures, pictures of freshly baked cakes, celebrity soundbites, and lots of comments that go "that cake looks delish!" and "Love you Miley!"
In short, an internet version of "The View".
Regardless, I think it will fail, if thats even the case. However, ideas such as these are the exact type that tone-deaf MBA types think up lots of times.
The sense I get among most of my friends "in real life" is that they read reddit but would never post to reddit. A driving force behind that is the fear of being seen as a "redditor," which is an image generally associated with neckbeards (ironically a term popularized by themselves).
It could certainly follow an 80/20 rule, i.e. 20% of users post 80% of content, but 20% of users also cause 80% of the disruption. I mean ultimately, normal people are outside living their lives, not fussing over reddit drama. Much of the controversy is definitely stirred up by a "vocal minority." But are they necessary? That's the question. If the upvote economy is zero sum, why would you want to waste so much of it on loud muckrakers?
You might very well be right. Perhaps the reddit leadership realized they have an aggressive vocal minority that is actively damaging their reputation, so they don't mind culling it from their ranks. That would explain Alexis' overt willingness to sit and watch. He literally doesn't care, because why would he? It's all part of the plan to get more cats on the front page, and money in his pocket. (I don't blame him in the slightest.)
Reddit is already mainstream by any sense of the words. The reason it's full of hateful, annoying etc. people is because that's how anonymous human behave. Reddit is not a super secret group that only hateful bad apple knows about. You can try to clamp down the bad content, but alienate the user base will end up badly because there will be no one left to join.
Are websites that are known for being more anonymous than reddit known for being more or less abrasiveness than reddit?
In my personal opinion, they are less abrasive. But I think I am definitely in the minority there. I think that anonymous sites are popularly known as more abrasive.
