Don't believe this for one second. Like many others have said, it was mostly a vocal minority. /r/pics has 8+ million subscribers and you think a majority of those subscribers wanted it to be shut down?
I'm honestly surprised the mods have the power to shut down a default subreddit.
And you think it didn't? I don't see you offering up any evidence for your position other than assuming they can't have because of the sheer number.
Meanwhile we have at least some indication that there were support well beyond the moderators, in the form of heavily upvoted threads with large number of comments in support of shutdowns for many subreddits.
It's very possible that the majority didn't support the shutdowns, but that support went far beyond the moderators is a fact easily ascertained by looking at the threads.
https://i.imgur.com/nrYiK5M.png
From https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjsm7/ell...
To be honest, it's hard to argue either way. Going by your indication, if we look at /r/all the past week and all the submissions comparing Ellen Pao to Kim Jong-Il or Mao Zedong, would you say reddit widely supports this comparison?
Pretty much the point I'm planning on making to /u/krispykrackers the /r/modnews thread.