Counterpoint: people used to be able to search for things. Now, SEO decides what the public is served by that process. Even though the people of Reddit offered the information freely, and also curated freely by volunteer moderators, it doesn't serve the monetization interests to simply hand over that free information without an additional charge. (and here on the Threadiverse we'd rather argue about whether all people in Western civilizations should be killed) So yeah, an act of absolute desperation.