I find this unlikely. DPR isn't a particularly important part of Amazon, so I don't think anyone in sufficiently high position of power cares much about what's discussed on one acquisition of theirs that's about to get axed.
I think it's just an attempt to concentrate all talks about the site being shutdown to a minimal number of threads. There doesn't seem to be particularly consistent policy about this on different forums how this is handled. As for the idea of attempting to handle it like this, I can kind of understand the reasoning, even though I don't think it's working well at all in practice. Kind of like trying to herd a large number of cats.