It was known, but oddly not widely known. During the r/jailbait shutdown, Reddit was more successful in getting the word out about exactly where the line was drawn.
This time around many users claimed that it was the beginning of a clean-up campaign instigated by Pao. I don't know if the administrators failed to get their message across or if they were simply out-shouted by the mob.
Well the only explanation provided in the FPH round is that they were being shut down for "behavior not ideas". That's more of a "trust us, we did this for the right reasons" to me.
Literally the very next sentence after the words "behavior not ideas" was "Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals," later followed by "When we are using the word 'harass', we're not talking about 'being annoying' or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day." Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...
This is exactly what I was talking about. The truth is right there, up front and easy to access, but you'd rather uncritically believe the voice of the mob.
This time around many users claimed that it was the beginning of a clean-up campaign instigated by Pao. I don't know if the administrators failed to get their message across or if they were simply out-shouted by the mob.