Unmoderated user generated nsfw forums were (are?) a beacon for dubious to illegal content. I forget the specifics, but didn’t Pornhub have to pivot from accepting a firehose of free user submitted content after failing to moderate sufficiently? User generated nsfw + free just seems like an impossible balance.

I don’t think the option to put some subreddits behind a paywall is necessarily a bad thing. Hopefully the federated link aggregators are in a better place now to absorb another exodus if reddit does scare off a bunch.