By definition the protest will always be meaningless, because ultimately the vast majority of users don't care. Reddit can weather this storm because most of the people who they make money off of are confused about what this is about and when it blows over will be otherwise ambivalent about all of it.
This was never going to work. Mods should have used this moment to get paid (percentage of ad revenue generated by the sub they moderate), not throw a tantrum about API access.
The people who care will move on, the people who don't can play with the leftovers. It's fine.
People still use MySpace after all.
Over time, the newbies will start to realize that they're using a hollowsite and start looking for more substance, and they'll come find us wherever we happen to be.
1: You didn't quote what I said, you quoted what you felt like I said.
2: Your wording is ambiguous. It could read as either reddit has already won and there is no use fighting it (which is some malarkey) or that wherever the people gather to have the conversations that they used to have on reddit.com will become reddit (which is weird but ok)
This was never going to work. Mods should have used this moment to get paid (percentage of ad revenue generated by the sub they moderate), not throw a tantrum about API access.