Reddit admins will say or do anything they think will push the IPO forward.
They have zero respect or care for the people on the site. To them, Reddit users are cattle to be sold and nothing more.
Forums existed long before Reddit became ubiquitous. They have no unique selling point and I think they are about to find that out.
The centralisation of web 2.0 has gone to the point that the benefits are far, far outweighed by the downsides.