Are Microsoft a big, evil company?
A. No, that’s insanely reductive. They’re super smart people, and sometimes super smart people make mistakes. What matters is what they do with knowledge of mistakes.
I have no doubt there are smart employees, but they don't call the shots. Case in point.
The dude set up a strawman argument, then didn't even bother to burn it down properly.
Let's not pretend it's all about "bad actors". They don't want masked traffic at all, the "bad actors" gives them an excuse.
And we know this because if the IP was the issue, they wouldn't let you use the site at all, but they will work fine after signing in. Any of these VPNs work as long as you're logged into reddit, even with a throwaway account.