To be clear I agree with you -- a large platform trying to coerce its users to stay is indeed a bad move. I'm also not trying to put Twitter on a pedestal here,

To be clear I agree with you -- a large platform trying to coerce its users to stay is indeed a bad move. I'm also not trying to put Twitter on a pedestal here, mainly just trying to indicate that this isn't necessarily an "only Reddit" thing, but something other social platforms often do. I could believe, however, that it could be hard to distinguish angry users that are protesting and telling people to move to another site because the platform / community is poorly run (as is the case with the current Reddit protest), vs potential "bad actors" that are hoping to capitalize and steal users to their own site even if communities were run perfectly. In the former case it's justified, in the latter case even if it doesn't draw users away it is probably still, at best, spam.