I've already felt the sting of the protests when googling solutions to various issues. I used to be able to include "reddit" in the search and would almost always find relevant information quickly, but now as OP mentioned many posts and whole communities have gone dark.

It's all been really eye opening about the potential negative consequences of having so many communities and information in the control of so few.

I think its more likely that the posts on reddit are the same, and we are simply starting to become accustomed to the posts\quality of comments on the fediverse.

Our eyes are finally starting to open.