my experience is eerily similar to yours. Used it a bit in the first few days, popped in on occasion. Deleted my account today. When I first went on, one of the questions I asked was "is this FOSS or privately owned" and got bombarded with that cadre of users explaining why it's better and safer for it to be owned by one person and that Jake would never make bad decisions like this exact one. At one point a user was being so agressive about how I should just trust Jake that I said I must be talking to his mom.
I also briefly had a Voat account when I thought Reddit was cracking down too much/too arbitrarily, and quickly realized that I was not in good company. I’ve been very optimistic about this Reddit exodus because it really doesn't have the same ideological bent to it, so the diaspora isn't just the dregs of reddit.