They can’t be replaced in this case - unless Reddit wants to spend lots of $$$ hiring moderators. As long as they leave that power to community mods, it is impossible for them to stop this type of protest.

I do think there is a real possibility Reddit will consider this a long-term risk and replace them with paid mods.

what it tells me is that it’s finally having a financial impact

Update for anyone wondering: Around 58% of the initial protest userbase has gone dark permanently (at the time of writing).

Many have gone public only to run polls on how to proceed, so that number is expected to increase.

I’ve heard several advertisers are reconsidering spending with Reddit, they didn’t realize the community had this much power over the site (which introduces more risk for them.) Hopefully that has some effect.

I just messaged them, but they haven’t had any activity on their account since creation (including in their own subs), so I don’t have a lot of hope.

Worst case scenario, if I don’t get a response in a week I will try contacting Ruud. Having to contact the instance admin directly for this sort of thing seems unsustainable though.