they can and they have (they’ve also threatened subreddits into reopening, so r/pics is now only allowing sexy John Oliver pics) – but it will take a while to manifest just how bad an idea this is

the problem is one of scale, something like 8800+ subreddits, several thousand moderators, but only a couple hundred admins (less now that Reddit is doing layoffs à la Twitter) – admins will be forced to moderate several hundred subreddits each without third party moderation tools, without any understanding of each subreddit, and (in many cases) facing an actively hostile community at this point …