Tbh I think the vast majority of people that use these sites are just there to mindlessly scroll. I do imagine a lot of their reactions to the protests was to be pissed at the weird basement dwellers disrupting their porn/aww/etc feeds
More than anything, the fact that Reddit absolutely quadruple-downed on steering people to their garbage app at the same time probably drove a lot of that crowd away. I regard it like Twitter X now: just another rotting, closed-off corporate theme park - and I refuse to believe any content I hit a login wall after getting linked to is important enough to deal with their shit.
I wonder if they have TV ads with sad coal miners paid for by their version of Koch Industries?
Just kidding. I know they don’t.