As a deeply involved Redditor (even a sub mod) you should already be aware that things like RSS and Old Reddit are used by a minuscule amount of people. The world moved on, and the vast majority of users are on the app or on the New Reddit website, generally on smartphones -- and that is precisely why the culture of the site has long since degenerated into what it is now.

So, Reddit killing old features isn't about trying to chain freethinking people to the algorithm, since there just aren't enough such people left to be significant. You can take the site's statement at face value; this really is about stopping unpaid scraping by bots.