This feels short-sighted. The odds of the protest having a major and immediate impact were always low. It’s not like the suits were going to have a sudden change of heart and realize they were alienating their users. The majority of Reddit’s userbase weren’t going to suddenly leave the site forever. But that wasn’t the point.

Here’s what’s changed since the API changes were announced:

1. Reddit’s responses to user concerns and protests have alienated even more users than the initial changes themselves, showing users exactly how Reddit’s administration sees them.
2. A whole bunch of mods, devs, and contributors who put in a lot hard work improving Reddit for free are now much less motivated to do so (if they’re still willing to do it at all).
3. The protest raised awareness of federated Reddit alternatives, which have grown substantially as a result. A lot of those people who helped improve Reddit for free are now turning their attention to kbin and Lemmy instead.
4. Reddit is on a clear trajectory. They’ve shown they will continue making user-hostile decisions and antagonizing their userbase in pursuit of further growth.

We now have an established alternative to Reddit that has reached a critical mass for growth. A lot more people are now working on making the fediverse better, and communities are forming that will attract new users on their own. From now on, every time Reddit makes another move like this, more people will move over (or get closer to moving over) and Reddit will drop in quality even more as a result. If there’s ever a Digg V4 moment (maybe when they kill old.reddit), the fediverse will be much more prepared to take on the mass exodus that results.