Can’t help but feel this was changed to allow them to hire a specific person.

The Beatles. It’s a plural of people who can keep a beat.

Depends on the location. Some places the lights turn to walk at regular intervals no matter what, the button only activates the beeping. But in my city the crosswalks never say walk unless someone pressed the button first.

Same thing with elevators. The door close button only works in a fraction of elevators.

Some subs went dark and never came back. Some went dark, came back only because Reddit appointed new mods and removed the old ones. There was a big shift in the top 25 or so most popular subs around that time. Total number of upvotes on the top posts also started trending downward around that time, not that I have any evidence that is a result of lowered traffic.