You can be right and have a good idea, but you cannot make someone listen or believe in your way of thinking.
Reddit, being a private company, always meant they were going to do what they wanted, regardless of how the moderators cried foul. They had made up their minds before they informed the user base, and they were going to double-down no matter if people liked it or not.
I suspect, they believed most people used the main website (new or old) and the default app. I suspect their analytic data may even have suggested that fact. The mods who spoke out, may have not done so alone, but Reddit was committed, and I suspect they believe they will recover in due time.
The only solution was not so much to protest, but to leave. Those of us who joined either Kbin or Lenny, and who choose not to come back, is what will speak volume. As a corporation, numbers are everything. Even unhappy people who visit will mean success, as it means ad revenue and justification in their eyes.
At the end of the day, that is what it will come down to... numbers. Do people leave Reddit and stay gone, or do curious minds lurk in the shadows and in time rejoin?
Honestly what would have worked better is to completely stop moderating. Let the trolls run ramped and porn fill the front page. Mods do what they do for free for a sense of community. Force Reddit to pay modders and they system they built crashes. Only then would the IPO fail and idiot Spez would be out.
I thought this was well and I don't know why they didn't do it sooner. I did hear some valid viewpoints from mods saying they actually cared about their subs and didn't want them to be shut down.
And pretty soon - as of tomorrow in fact - a lot of mods won't be moderating as much so that scenario will no doubt happen anyway...