Well...

Reddit is a deeply misunderstood community because its actual function is not governed by policy, it's governed by folklore. In order to know that folklore you have to do a lot. The more you do the less interested you are in interacting with those who don't understand the folklore. So it's easy to look at this and go "ohhhhh shit major change" when in fact what you're seeing is posturing ahead of a major business play.

Reddit Inc. has always reserved the right to stomp the shit out of any community they feel like. They banned f7u12 for 2 days for fucking with the CSS. They took down an even dozen circlejerkers hangouts for violating site rules (I oughtta know, I goaded 'em into seven of them). They took down /r/jailbait essentially because SomethingAwful threatened them. Previously they'd taken down /r/jailbait when violentacrez modded those said same circlejerkers (in part, to goad me).

They don't give a fuck. They really don't. They want you to think they give a fuck because the more they stomp on communities, the more time they have to spend stomping and they have barely better community management tools than the paltry array moderators have to work with. If you check that thread, you'll see a couple hundred communities mentioned that are worse than fph that aren't banned - this is how it starts. Now that they've opted to pull one offensive subreddit, the "you pulled X why not Y" discussions commence and all of a sudden, their thinly-spread team has to get into community management.

Assuming you mean it, that is.

About that "thinly spread team", by the way. Reddit raised $50m on a half-billion-dollar valuation in September. Supposedly they pulled in eight million dollars in ad revenue. Yet the front page still shakes you down for donations (Reddit Gold). Does that seem like a disconnect to anyone else?

Reddit Inc was, in the private corners of the site, raked over the coals for years over subs like /r/beatingwomen, /r/creepshots, /r/coontown and the like. They never once answered why /r/beatingwomen was allowed but /r/stormfront wasn't; the answer is pretty obvious though. They knew they'd face a lot more bad press for neonazi subreddits than they would for shock subreddits. But that was before the VCs started seeing the writing on the wall for Internet 2.0. Everyone is eager to get the payout ahead of '99 Mk. II. You don't have to read Pando every day to see that Secret cratered, to see that Snapchat is overvalued, to see that Groupon was a harbinger not a fluke.

The money in Reddit wants their money out of Reddit. The only way they're going to get that is if they can sell Reddit before it craters. They're not going to be able to do that if Reddit is associated with the Fappening, Creepshots, FindBostonBombers and every other scandal under the sun. When even Twitter says "you know, we prolly oughtta do something about stalking and harassment" it becomes pretty obvious that Reddit needs to say "We are doing something about stalking and harassment."

Take a look at your post. Now take a look at this post. do you see the part that's missing from your post?

Yup. Code changes.

When even twitter is willing to tweak the code to look like they're doing something, a blog post without any demonstrable engineering change is the clearest signal there is of "business as usual."