Appreciate the reply. I believe I'm in the clear to mention the following now, so I will, out of respect for my fellow Redditors.

I interned for Reddit last year and got hounded during the initial 'blackout' phase. It was a shitstorm and did not make the support team want to aid your cause. There was even a time where Reddit considered suing a "rival" platform (I won't name it but you all know it) out of their sheer frustration with the users. But investors smacked some sense into them.

Getting an outside perspective on how average Redditors perceived everything has been nice. Up until now the media had everyone (myself included) believing the public was against having a civil environment. I can now see that is the opposite of what was intended. Let me just say, no one but PR handled that whole situation. We were strictly told to 'spam' every report/comment we got regarding the issue last year. It just became a hassle. Several thousand accounts were shadowbanned and actual IPs were tracked and banned. Maybe that was a sign of things to come.

All I can say is they went haaaaaaam on creating new features that could track users better, specifically mods of subs. That is the real reason why it took so long to start rolling things out. By November of last year they accepted funding of a certain government agency and then 2016 rolled around. I was out, I have no idea what happened since then. I recently heard of the gov. tracking thing and deleted all my comments. Reddit is not the best place for free speech if it is as you want it. A certain other place isn't either because they copy pasted this one element-by-element. Just to let you know.

And with Tor becoming a felony if you're caught on it this December....internet trolls will either soon behave or face hefty sentences. I'm 50/50 on this to be honest with all of you.