I speculate that the real reason they are canning the canary program is that it was headed for extinction all by itself anyway.

Reddit's canary is gone, and they made it as clear as they legally can that it was due to a National Security Letter.

Effectively the canary program lost one of its best assets and few people gave a damn.

The flaw at the heart of the canary program is that it relied on public uproar when a canary disappeared. In the absence of that, they will disappear one by one - death by a thousand cuts - and then the program itself is dead.

EFF have seen the writing on the wall and pulled the plug before the program was seen to be doomed anyway.