The answer is easy - because people came face to face with the downsides of free speech, and also how it has been gamed to promote the very worst of humanity, culminating in the election of the most dangerously, maliciously unqualified person to ever lead America.
But there was no reevaluation. It was just silently dropped in favour of "safety."
And of course free speech is being used to promote the worst. You don't need much protection to discuss your favourite brand and their amazing products.
How can there not have been a reevaluation? Any changed policy is the result of reevaluation.
These debates have been happening for a long time on places like Twitter, where the safety vs freedom debate has raged for a long time. And there's a "Reddit bans community" outrage pretty much every year.
A change in policy is just a change in policy. I would expect a reflection on the before and after states, some rationale. Even something as simple as a blog post stating that due to X, Y, Z, Reddit now considers engagement or whatever more important than free speech and will adjust rules and enforcement accordingly.
But there's more to it. It's not only Reddit or some other company. There is a general change in attitude from SV companies towards free speech. Which is what worries me because Reddit is eminently replaceable, Internet culture is not.
The change is not just with companies. You can see the changes here too from the average poster. More shocking than free speech was the turn away from democracy after the Brexit vote went the "wrong way" on this very site.
In the past it was taken for granted that the tech community was mostly liberal. That is no longer the case both here and the country at large.
New evidence can lead to reevaluating opinions.