Why would users want to harm Reddit employees?

Realistically, because some people are dumb. It’s the same reason people harass actors for playing characters they don’t like.

And frankly, reddit shielded the_donald when they were openly breaking the rules about vote manipulation in such a huge way that they dominated /r/all.

There’s a private subreddit I’m a member of that I’ll probably stick around for a while on. It’s one where they kick people out if they don’t participate for a week, so I’ll have an interesting sample of how many active redditors are leaving.

Reddit has been crappy for years now, and a lot of people have wanted to leave but didn’t have anywhere to go. Now that there’s somewhere else, people will continue to trickle out as they get tired of it. It doesn’t need to all happen at once – in fact, reddit doesn’t need to shut down. It just needs viable alternatives with a critical community mass, and we’re there now.

…or completely inadequate.