The framing of "Go back to normal" or "Only sexy pictures of John Oliver" was clever. Lots of people are going to pick the funny option over the boring one in basically any low stakes poll, so even people who don't care much about the protest probably still voted for it.

There's also a lot more motivation for the people who are pissed about Reddit's changes vs. the people who just want their infinite feed of content back to its former state.

I bet similar scenarios play out with spez's whole "moderator democracy" idea.