My god that is scummy. I am getting the sense that they will just force re-open all of the private subreddits, and Reddit will just continue on as if nothing happened. They’ll be continuing on without any of my traffic though. I am done with companies manipulating and exploiting their users to generate profits.
Most of what I have seen on the meme communities I follow have been par-and-course with what I expected to see on internet. Although I agree that it is morally wrong to joke with malintent when someone passes, I think humor is a normal response to tragedy. As long as the memes aren’t egregious about it, then they still get a chuckle out of me and help me feel better about the situation.