The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. It's the official end of the battle. The Reddit protest is over, and Reddit won.
The discussions and posts on subreddits I frequented are lower quality. Seems like popular has a completely different mix compared before protests. I’ve seen similar happen elsewhere, it will be a slow slide into irrelevance unless something changes.