That's a pretty different case, and exactly why I asked the question. I have heard of cases where essentially a mod went on a power trip/tantrum and wanted to

That's a pretty different case, and exactly why I asked the question. I have heard of cases where essentially a mod went on a power trip/tantrum and wanted to shut down a subreddit, but that behavior specifically angered the vast majority of subscribers to that subreddit. I think the optics and reality of that are very different from a subreddit shutting down to protest the API changes (in some cases, subreddits held polls).