I wonder what got them there. Maybe they planned to cash out at some point and needed funds to grow faster. Or maybe they weren’t making enough money to keep Reddit running, and felt the need to bring on board external investors. In the second case, it’s hard to say what they could have done differently. In theory someone could have picked up Reddit’s source code if it went bankrupt and launched a new site. Several Reddit competitors have appeared over the years, like Voat. But they never really took off.

I’m curious to see how federation changes the game. It doesn’t really matter all that much where your instance is, so if one instance has to shut down due to operating expenses it can’t recoup, people can still move elsewhere.