I can't even imagine it being about the IPO anymore.
There might have been some concerns about profitability numbers for an IPO, but I don't think that's something you can right in a hurry. If the investors didn't like "N quarters of losing money", will they be that much more impressed by "we slashed and burnt big chunks of the platform, but we don't really have any clue if this will stick?"
More importantly, they had a strong narrative they could sell investors: They were the "anti-social media social media". Users remained largely in control of their curation, the content was less ephemeral and more indexable. They were perfectly positioned to differentiate themselves as other big players went whole hog on the "the algorithm is mostly standing between you and what you want to see" models.
Does that narrative hold up when their user base is either fleeing or feels held hostage?
It's 100% about the IPO. Other large websites have gotten into trouble with the credit card companies by offering porn. It's why Pornhub removed unverified amateur content, OnlyFans considered not allowing porn, and probably others. Your platform absolutely plummets in value if people have a hard time spending money there. Hiding unverified subs sounds exactly like this kind of move.
I thought unverified content was removed because of rampant unchecked abuse. Ah, maybe it was that that spurned the companies to make pornhub remove it.
That was the excuse the credit card companies used to not allow pornhub transactions anymore. But even after they removed that content the credit card companies didn't come back.