the conversation should never be about reddit losing, it's about the users winning.
if only. Lotta people really thought they could make reddit worried and that if they rebelled enough they could fix reddit. If it wasn't going to work after that 2-3 day blackout, it wasn't going to work. The mod in that article said it best:
“More than a month has passed, and as things on the internet go, the passion for the protest has waned and people’s attention has shifted to other things,” an r/aww moderator wrote in a post about the rule change.
And yeah, attention span on the internet is low. If you can't fix, it's best to start rebuilding what you want elsewhere. The best time for a backup community was 5 years ago; the second best time is now, so we don't have this problem of "where do we go from Reddit?" in another 5 years. If more people had the courage to leave, it may have ended in a better protest than these attempts to ruin the IPO or whatever.
Better to play the long game for now. This won't be the last drama, and it's simply better to make sure any jank is fixed for the next time people get frustrated and seek greener pastures. That slow burn is how we create a proper platform.