Reddit has been careful to set the goalposts entirely in the realm they control, they ensured that in public communication “victory” means having the remaining subs open up. Ultimately, they do have final say over what is actually served on reddit.com. However, what they cannot control is their users, the contributors who built their empire for free. And they did a piss poor job of keeping us around.

They can force mods out, but they won’t be able to force them back in. As for users, I have no doubt they managed to push away the ones most resistant to monetization, but if that really was their strategy, whichever moron came up with that really needs to google the 1-9-90 principle.