Let me clear: im completely against these bannings specifically. It looks like a very political move and it came out of nowhere without any warning to the subreddit mods, volunteers who make reddit what it is.
Having said that, I still don't buy the argument that this will have some sort of larger negative impact on the reddit community. Reddit is way too large for some niche subreddits to actually matter in the big picture.
What happened with digg and MySpace? They were too big to fail too but what happened was that more attractive places occurred and people went to them.
I'm proposing that an exodus of non toxic people from place A to place B makes place B less toxic. Now I don't think we will see the alternatives improve overnight but if things carry on along this road then we will see it.
Having said that, I still don't buy the argument that this will have some sort of larger negative impact on the reddit community. Reddit is way too large for some niche subreddits to actually matter in the big picture.