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/
Most of us, the “chronically online” have a lot of voting power and are up to date with reddit and other options to use it. Now, most "left, AKA the majority of reddit users, are just casual users using reddit like any other social media. And most are the kind of people that browse without any form of adblocking