Reddit has become Facebook with a different management team. These people are motivated by profit and that's the only way their decisions make any kind of sense. Whenever we mix the profit motive with a service for people, the people will always play second fiddle. It's why mixing profit with healthcare is inhumane and it's what's so great about Wikipedia.
i'm of another notion, i think its more about controlling public space for discourse itself than it is about profit.. they want to sever access to whatever they might consider subversive dialogue and control the next generation's access to it.
The only thing that matters is profits. Those profits come from advertising. The businesses doing the advertising do not want their brands associated with things that are controversial or offensive to the general public.