Yeah, of course, nothing stops them to change a 0 to 1 in their production database, they don’t have to respect the actions of the moderators, unfortunately.

I call bullshit. I just checked, and r/tumblr is still private, and I’m willing to bet that the huge modlist for r/AdviceAnimals indicates that this list of mods is the list of mods before the blackout. What’s more, r/AdviceAnimals is hardly a sub critical enough to force open.