this. they take money from dark money political activism groups like media matters. there was even a memo that leaked on it around 2018 or so. it specifically said they're going after moderation roles on all the biggest groups on social media, and then will use tech to make it impossible to post anything that isn't in line with their political goals.

the censorship tech they're running uses the APIs so much to constantly scan all the comments and all the edits. if the API starts costing money, they will literally spend millions more a month because they're powermodding over 10k subs, and their censorship tech is scanning everything.

THAT is why these subs are going dark. it has nothing to do with some independent app being better than reddit's official dogshit app.