Reddit has entertained an untenable combination of goals. They cannot have commercial success, and host communities focused upon the disparaging of others. Like Twitter, they long argued that they were only a platform, but the world simply doesn't view Reddit that way. Now that they are seeking commercial success, they must fit the perception of a place. A safe, commercially viable place.
I think the reason that most people are 'mad' about Reddit changing into this safe, and commercially viable place is that they don't want that out of Reddit. Reddit's investors probably do, but its users don't. So when a site confirms its choice to favor its investors' concerns over its users' then you understandably get the masses angry. I don't care about fatpeoplehate. Or batteredwives or niggers or any of the other subs that could be banned. I don't go to them because I don't want to see them. But I want to see censorship out my choices less. It doesn't change that these feelings exist in the world, and doesn't change anything but commercial viability for Reddit. If Reddit doesn't deserve to lose users, I'm not saying die because Reddit is a site not a living thing, for turning on its users then what would it deserve to lose users for?
They maintain they are a platform because their ultimate monetization strategy is porting their architecture to other websites to use for comments, aggregation and hierarchy. They were going to be Disqus 8 years before Disqus. This is why Conde Nast bought them, this is why they got real serious about Fuck Sears. You build Reddit into your knowledgebase and it's almost like you don't need to hire tech support. Your users do it for you. Unfortunately the codebase is unwieldy as fuck and has essentially no immune system. So they've been biding their time, incubating and training, until they have something robust enough that it can fly the nest and go alight on someone else's servers (for a licensing fee, of course). Unfortunately for them, in the interim "Powered by Reddit" has come to read a lot like "Ebola Inside." I think they started pivoting towards "community" back when they bought RedditGifts, but they didn't really have a clue how to run a community. They certainly don't want to staff up into one.