I would not be surprised if this is an experiment to see the effect of killing API on the event. I mean, really, not many accounts have left reddit (a lot have showed up on lemmy/kbin, but a small fraction of reddit), and I remember a lot of complaints of bots in the last place. It's just 3 months since the last one, so they should get great data on the effect of API charges on their bot access.
The fact that they would be obviously covering it up would be noticeable to people and would cause what they are trying to cover up to become more prominent in the news and on the site.