Two reasons the ongoing Reddit protests are important:
the protests keep the pressure on reddit and can lead to ongoing news coverage (which also keeps the pressure on reddit) . Otherwise, reddit will be able to spin the narrative "see? we told you it would just blow over and it did"
kbin, Lemmy, and other alternatives aren't yet at the point where they're ready for millions of redditors. For example, the modCoord post makes the important point that a lot of reddit's moderation functionality isn't accessible ... but almost none of this functionality even exists yet on kbin and Lemmy. So most people aren't going to leave yet.
Don't get me wrong, leaving now is also a good option if you can find what you want elsewhere! But not everybody's there yet.
Yeah really. But, I'm sure he's surrounded by people -- investors, other CEOs who love the precedent of exploiting their volunteers, probably most if not all Reddit high-level staff -- encouraging him and telling him it's going well. Back in the 1990s Microsoft was known as being in a reality distortion field and I've seen similar things happen at other companies as well.
Thanks the thing, when internet folks get riled up we can have a serious impact. Redditors have always been great at this -- Restore the Fourth, the SOPA/PIPA protests in 2011 -- and Lemmy and kbin can be a great vehicle.