During the first days after the API pricing fiasco was first announced, a lot of popular subs protested in more creative ways, like /r/pics changing their rules to allow only pics of John Oliver, for instance.

Reddit can of course change the rules listed in the sidebar of a sub and replace the mods of a protesting sub with people who will enforce the rules Reddit would prefer they enforce, but they can’t control the behavior of all the users.

Smart protesting mods could post GPG public keys on post announcing the beginning of the protest and then if banned, evade bans with throwaway accounts and post messages encouraging the protest to continue along with cryptographic proof that they’re the banned mod.

Of course, all this would require a big, unpopular change like the API pricing changes, but if Reddit is preparing for just such an eventuality, that might mean they’re gearing up to do something similarly egregious again.

Not saying this is for sure the form protest on Reddit will take, but it’s an example. Reddit can’t really base its business model on user-generated content and then give users no say over what content they post.