Three things happened:

1. RedReader did get a free api key for being accessible for screen readers. All the other third party apps got left in the dust.

2. The people who were seriously mad came here. Lemmy was still a bit of a ghost town before these protests, and it was around this time that it gained enough traction to be a viable platform imo.

3. The people that didn’t leave got waited out by reddit and went back.

Realistically, who would even buy Windows Lite? What advantage would it have over regular Windows AND Linux systems?

Bullshit. Nobody, or at least very few people, expected Reddit to revert the changes. A protest can be successful even if it doesn’t lead to immediate change. I was here on Lemmy long before the API nonsense happened over at Reddit, and the difference over here is night and day. Lemmy has been around for awhile, but until these last few months it couldn’t hold a candle to Reddit in terms of content or activity. Maybe it still can’t, but now it has enough users to be viable. Reddit might go on like nothing happened, but in the background a competitor has been born.