They've already started taking small steps in this direction. For example, about a year and a half ago they added the option for subreddit moderators to "lock"

They've already started taking small steps in this direction. For example, about a year and a half ago they added the option for subreddit moderators to "lock" an individual comment to prevent others from replying to it (previously it was only possible to lock entire threads). They deliberately avoided exposing this functionality through the old Reddit UI. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/brgr8i/moderators_you_may_now_lock_individual_comments/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/brgr8i/moderators_...