You're right. Call me a pessimistic tinfoil hat but there is a good chance that Reddit Inc. is playing both sides here. This has been a contemporary tactic employed by many authoritarians of our times recently, a tactic I'd like to call "giving your enemy that extra rope to hang itself".
It's no wonder that public sympathy is strongly shifting towards the side of spez and Reddit Inc. after all the major subs went dark all of a sudden. The concept of "indefinite blackout" was problematic to begin with. Reddit black outs had happened earlier too when net neutrality was in danger or freedom curbing laws were being passed, it used to be just for a day or two to garner attention.
The impression netizens are getting right now is that these "rogue mods" have just hijacked the sub-reddits and disappeared, thus bringing the whole conversations and ecosystem to a standstill. How exactly is this perception not working in favor of Reddit and spez? As I said, giving your enemy the extra rope to hang itself!
