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 Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.::Reddit corporate claims victory over its disgruntled mods as r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos abandon the "John Oliver rule."
There is no easy to use singular Reddit replacement. (The fediverse is not easy to use to normal people.)
Reddit is such a large social media site now that all the nerds getting angry and leaving doesn't matter. 10 years ago this change would have killed Reddit, but now that normal people like my mom are on Reddit they don't give a shit about using the official Reddit app, in fact they were probably already using it.
But your mom was probably not part of the 1% of Reddit posting things people cared about. A lot of those people left and, I'm told (I haven't been back to look), the change is noticeable.
Politics - I'm banned because of my username, but plenty of subscribers. Interestingly I can't figure out how to contact a moderator to get unbanned. The information page doesn't list who the moderators are. I had a similarly "offensive" name on Reddit for a decade and never got banned from r/politics
askreddit - plenty of subscribers on Lemmy
Android - plenty of subscribers on Lemmy
Linux - plenty of subscribers on Lemmy
Economics - maybe a post or two a day
When I go back to Reddit, on desktop, all of those are operating as they normally do, with no perceptible change on the amount of posts.