I don't know how shadow banning users without talking about it, firing well known and liked employees that contributed a good portion of what made the site popular, and shutting down subreddits is supposed to make money.
Talking about it with whom? With you?? Shadow banning is clearly outlined in the reddiquete, Doxing, vote brigadiering, harrassing, illegal activity will result in shadow ban. I still haven't heard about case here where shadow banning was not justified. You feel free to enlighten me.
No, your analogy is completely wrong. It is more like this. You own a food chain. It is popular among everyone in community of all kinds. However, certain group starts, well basically, harassing individuals from the parking lot (within food chain) where they used to hang around when they come to eat. This, not only is illegal, but against the rules too. This is also, you think, bad for business, because you don;t; want that kind of behavior associated with your food chain. You decided, because you are high profile food chain, to ban these kids from gathering on that parking lot. Not to ban them form eating form the food chain, just ban them from doing what they were doing. Then these kids come tomorrow braking windows and spray pain the doors "Literaly Hitler" , protest and make noise in front of food chain store, and complain how their basic rights have been violated. To others, it was simply "dudes, it is only a burger store.... and also you were being dicks to other patrons" and that's why it looks like they are throwing a tantrum.
As for Victoria firing, it was something a company reserves right to do so and the only people who had legitimate reasons to complain were not users, but mods od IAMA, because they were caught with their guards off and complained about lack of communication. Users, literally, were not affected at all. To extend your analogy, it is like you decide to fire a person that was handling marketing and communication with company producing next "kids meals". You didn't ban kids meals, you didn't forbid anything or change your magic souce. Staff mad eof volunteers only complains (again having legitimate reasons) because they have incoming shipment and were not prepared. They protest this lack of communication by closing down tilts for hour or so. Consumers (arguably same one that were banned from parking lot earlier) again start to throw rocks and pretests against firing when in truth it had nothing to do with them and that is why again it looks like users throw temper tantrum.
Now, I didn't even touch a topic,how your food chain has been reciving money for literally ages form various investors and venture capitals, and was running red for long time.....so you owe to this people big time to make some money......and when you couple that with high risk user base that can turn your back on one wrong business decision, then you see it is as high risk investment and decide that it is not best place to invest if similar business comes along.