Comment by johnnyanmac

>The more reasonable solution would be to disallow moderators from changing the protection level after creating a sub (but allowing it by petitioning the admins).

historically speaking, some subs have gone private short term simply to control some crazy amounts of spam or harassment. And there's many more instances where subs went restricted for a while. So this isn't the only feature of privating communities.

>not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.

No tools are ever designed for use in protest, so this is a circular argument. That's part of what a protest is.