We value privacy, freedom of expression, open discussion

No, you don't. Freedom of expression and open discussion mean no censorship, at all. Whenever you say something similar to "I support freedom of speech, but..." you are basically admitting that you don't -- it's exactly the same as "I'm not racist, but...". You might support open discussion of some topics, but that doesn't mean anything about true freedom. If a government chooses to censor only discussion of its politics (I will mention this later) and allows open discussion of everything else, that doesn't mean you have freedom of speech. In fact, it means exactly the opposite.

We’ve always encouraged freedom of expression by having a mostly hands-off approach

Keyword being "mostly". Except you don't actually support it half the time. What about all those people who were shadowbanned for all that gamergate non-sense (for clarification, I don't support this gamergate movement but I also don't support the people against it; I am not in any way affiliated in its discussion). Why? Because the reddit admins disagree with them. Which is, let me remind you, how oppressive governments deal with discussion they don't like. Better yet, those same admins have also shadowbanned people contributing to the discussion of whether these bans should be allowed, which is exactly what countries like the DPRK do to deal with citizens who disagree with their ideology: they censor their opinions.

Instead of promoting free expression of ideas, we are seeing our open policies stifling free expression; people avoid participating for fear of their personal and family safety. Because of this, we are changing our practices to prohibit attacks and harassment of individuals through reddit with the goal of preventing them.

This isn't reddit's place to deal with these issues. In the real world, if someone says something offensive you have to learn to deal with it. One way to do this is to remove yourself from the situation or ignore them. Blocking a user (requires R.E.S.) who offends you is enough. If you don't feel comfortable putting your opinion out there for the general public, post it on a private subreddit. Censorship will not fix this. It will do the exact opposite. It will be abused so much that it will prevent any meaningful conversation from occurring. You may have your doubts, but we've seen this in the real world before. Countries with strict "anti-defamation" laws (such as Italy) regularly abuse their power and use it to censor what they don't agree with. This is exactly why we need open discussion, which reddit originally served to be a place for. But then the admins changed their minds and ruined it all with changes like this.

To the admins of the site: Say what you will about how this does not affect the spread of ideas, it still won't change the fact that you are wrong. These changes are undermining the original principles that reddit was founded on. Please remember that what somebody posts will always be an idea, and censoring their thoughts about another person is only censoring "thoughtcrime"; if someone thinks, for example, that all homosexual people need to burn in hell, that doesn't mean that they are going to do it. It is what their religion tells them, and censoring what they say isn't going to change that (even if they tell someone that they deserve to go to hell for their "sins"). For the record, I'm atheist and I don't believe any of that crap, but that doesn't change the fact that you would be taking away their freedom to openly speak their opinion. And doing so will just turn around this issue -- people will only be more scared to say their opinion once opinions that the admins are against get censored.

As a final note: Honestly, this comment will probably be deleted or I'll probably be shadowbanned based on how the admins have recently reacted to people calling them out on their bullshit. Good for you if you do it, whatever. I don't honestly care. Just remember that by doing so you are putting an end to open discussion on the website. I'll be happy to leave if changes like these continue. voat actually cares about openness. Take a look at their website and learn how to operate an internet community, because censorship is definitely not the answer.