the inevitable move, maybe. The only move (for profits), yes. But they are executing this absolutely horribly. Reddit has never been an overly formal site, and I guess that is built into the culture of the admins as well.
>they owed it to their communities to hand over the keys when they ‘quit’ in protest
Historically speaking, they never did. We have seen mods run a sub to the ground several times and the result was users jumping ship to a new community.
So while inevitable, it is inherently hypocritical for Reddit to suddenly care now as if they ever cared about users.