Prior to the protest reddit was in full support of the protest. Most polls on subs supported a shutdown. Now, seemingly every community cant understand why the protest was needed and they’re calling it a mod power trip. There is a 3rd possibility. This is an unfounded conspiracy but reddit themselves could be manipulating scores.
See the NFL thread if you don’t mind sending traffic
https://reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here_so_we_dont_get_fined/
My wife hasn’t left either but she’s a once a week lurker anyway. Just hits up the drama subs for a quick hit of bullshit and then moves back to Facebook for some more drama dosing. She knows about all of this, but the drama subs like TIFU are already fully populated over there with content, so there’s no desire to see cat pics on Lemmy.