Dont let anybody convince you the protest is not working, otherwise they wouldn't be doing all of this in response.
I left reddit and don't intent to come back, but for those protesting, I wish you all the luck

Paul Ekman had this "theory of basic emotions" that were supposedly universal for humans and had their set of "innate" gestures for each one.
For his original works, he travelled to some secluded communities and registered that the expressions for "happiness / fear / anger / disgust / sadness / surprise" were supposedly shared among human kind.
Why do I say supposedly? Because a lot of Ekman's theory was disproved (for example, he claimed each emotion had an area of the brain dedicated to it, or at least some unique structure, which fMRI studies are not finding to be true, even if there is a lot we still don't know on human emotion). There's also claims that he contamined his data when he went to these secluded communities, and influenced (probably unknowingly) his results to make everyone's expressions match the ones he expected for each emotion.

So... are there universal expresions of emotion? Not an easy answer. The physical responses more linked to survival probably are (say fight/ flight in response to fear, startle in response to surprise). The more social ones? don't know, some may be heavily influenced by culture. You would have to make a study on very young, blind babies from different cultures or something of the sort which would not be easy. Also there's the thing that babies cannot tell you what emotion they are experimenting, even if you can asume some (loud noise and baby is crying probably equals fear, BUT the baby can't confirm it, which is a methodological problem for some Scientists).

If this interests you, Ledoux has some great approachable work on the "survival circuits" of the brain that explain emotion in a way comparable to animals and linked to their evolutional value.

Remember all those posts that sometimes will come up in r/relationship advice or subs like that portraying really vulnerable people that are really down on their luck ("Im a single mom/dad and have to do horrible things so that my children can eat" "Im an abused teen and can't escape my home" "Im trying to escape a borderline cult" etc etc)?

Now, Im sure at least some of those were fake to begin with (I don't have anything against those subs or those stories, but you can't guarantee every single one of them is true). Now imagine if they could put a little edit in the end "thank you all, you are so kind, I managed to sign up into reddit's content program, so if you want to help make sure to upvote and leave some gold, it means so much".

In those subs, people were already helping out how they could (I would often see people offering to send food or stuff to OPs home, things like that)... so that's not gonna backfire at all if its implemented.

They are probably not gonna get backpay, but what this could achieve is to force reddit's hand in legally recognizing mod's work from that point on and giving the mods more standing than they have now.
At the very worst, it sends a message and helps to continue bringing to light reddit's shitty practices.

Honestly, If I were the mods Id nuke the whole subreddit: delete anything of importance, especially any important asset you made for that community (say, FAQs, resources, links, banners, logos, etc.) or better than delete it, edit it out with information as to where you are migrating, leave the shit behind. When you are done leave the sub closed till they take it away from you, and best of luck to anyone that has to rebuild again from nothing.

I mean, if all you are posting is John Oliver, it achieves three goals:
1- Puts the spotlight on the protest, which many users probably didn't know much about or didn't understand (cause they were out of the loop and just found reddit blacked out all of a sudden).
2- People eventually will get tired of John Oliver and/ or the same images will start getting reposted over and over again, which makes the sub uninteresting and users less likely to lurk or engage.
3-New users of the platform will come into reddit and see it filled with a bunch of crap instead of thought out content.

Since reddit is not playing fair there is no easy answer on what's the best way to protest. If they remain closed and they just put new mods in charge that will keep the sub running bussiness as usual, making the sub as unatractive as posible sounds like a better option.
I personally jumped ship and came to kbin, but I don't run a subreddit.

If you replace the reddit.com part of any reddit link with https://reddit.adminforge.de/, you can browse without giving them any traffic / interaction (for example reddit.com/r/tihi --> https://reddit.adminforge.de/r/tihi)

Yesterday and the day before I was intimidated by (lemmy /kbin / the fediverse) today Im already more comfortable. Anyone feeling the same, I advice to just mess around commenting and posting, people in here are nice, you'll get the hang of it if you try.
Haven't gone on reddit since the blackout and probably won't go back.
Hope more of us join, so far its been fun.
Although some of the communities I liked to browse on reddit are not yet here, its helping me expand and diversify a bit on the content I usually read, so I ain't complaining.

Any sociologist out there could have a field trip with the whole reddit protest.

Im halfway tempted to start claiming demodded subs and filling them up with instructions on how to move to their kbin/lemmy alternatives.
If they kick me out and ban me I won't find out cause I don't go into reddit no more.

Edit: of course they would never give the subreddits to me, but I find the idea really funny

Oh yeah, Back on reddit I never checked the notifications on my comments. I liked giving the advice but got terrible anxiety when someone answered because I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance of someone flying off the handle. Making it even harder, english ain't my native language and from time to time if Im tired I mess up.

In here people have been so nice, even as Im learning and messing up how to work this platform.

Reposting a comment I made somewhere else on the site cause people are finding it useful.
Im not a mod, but on a smaller scale on my own profile, I grabbed all my most upvoted comments (started from the really upvoted ones until I reached 20 upvotes or so) and edited them out to only leave the first few phrases or words. Then inserted a message that read:

"This used to be a full comment, you can find more resources in the link bellow since I have moved to kbin and reddit doesn't deserve my content! Bye reddit, you won't be missed!
For more [subject] advice, find me on https://kbin.social/m/[subject]"

Bonus points if I could cut the comment out at the exact time it was about to become useful "Whats actually going on here is that..."

Did that sorting by most upvoted and also my fresh, since it wass manual I only managed to do so much, But I liked the approach better than just deleting it all or editing with "fuckspez" so that they could get back and revert it.

May not be the solution for everyone, but if you made and posted some important self-made content on reddit (say a guide of some sort, a compendium of usefull resources, etc), editing it out like that could work to keep it gone and redirect trafic to the fediverse.

Since its manual you can't do it for all content, but you could do it to anything important you built in that community.

Probably she wanted to stall the process as much as posible so that they could bill the service some more before cancelling.
That or they have a script to make the service as hard to cancel as posible and she was just parroting that, without really paying attention to what OP was saying.

I do think protests achieved so much. They made a lot of noise, put spez's terrible handling of the situation under the spotlight right before IPO.
And honestly, even if spez doesn't go back on the API pricing (which he probably won't), having subreddits protesting and fleeing to the fediverse puts the writing on the wall for other shitty platforms (current or to come).
Back when Elon started destroying twitter I did not get how mastodon worked, but I do see myself working around it now I figured out kbin (although Im not on twitter all that much to justify switching right now), can imagine is the case for anyone fleeing to the fediverse.

Kbin already counts upvotes and boosts, similar to reddit karma.
But it could perhaps be something that stays hidden for everyone but yourself and moderators (provided you are participating in their magazine, otherwise anyone could open a magazine to see everyone elses karma)

Negociation 101: ask for more than you actually expect to get (within reason, you don't want people to think you are a joke).
They ask for backpay not really expecting for backpay, just to give them wiggle room to settle in court for better rights from that moment on.
Last and only time I had to sue someone (and won) my lawyer told me what the usual result of cases like mine is, then we asked for that and like, 20% extra. Then on the mediation we "negociated" for the amount we were really expecting to get.
(This is all personal speculation, Im not a mod, clearing that up just in case).

Also like, most of the subs I frequented had pinned posts about looking for mods for months, sometimes years. To some it could be tempting, but its still hard unpaid work, and this time with less people to front it than when the mod searches were being held.

Yeah, about that... I have a secret to confess.
Im not actually a 2D dog

Only came back to reddit to edit my profile stating where Ive switched to (kbin in my case).
Left one comment on a post asking for advice telling them an answer was posted on the subs's kbin equivallent.
Other than that, I don't plan to log back in, and if I need to search something I do it adding https://reddit.adminforge.de/

Yep, I have experience with volunteer work (not on reddit, in an actual organization with good intended objectives).
The organization is great, we are ALL volunteers, from the directives to the everyday volunteers. ALL money made goes back into making the project reach wider, don't want to give many details but money goes into giving out free or very accesible education and health-related services to those in need. We have access to the numbers, its all transparent.

The coworkers are nice, its a very niche area of work and we all know one another (so you also make connections with some important people in the field). Some of us have long lasting friendships. The directives of the organization are a mix of founders and the longer lasting volunteers that want to take on those roles. All positions are decided by vote of the community, anyone from the community can apply to any role and pitch in their ideas to make it better. We do that every six months.
It opens many many doors for you, can't begin to count the amount of stuff I learned, the amount of opportunities that stemed from that (internships, jobs, grants... etc) and volunteers get to use all services the organization provides for free (so I got free education, very discounted health-related services for my family, etc.)

All this to say this is a nice place with a nice working environment (all things reddit is not), that actually gives voice and opportunities to everyone involved.
All that, and we still can't make most of our volunteers stay longer than a few months, because when any other compromise comes up, volunteer work is the first thing to go (which is logical, that's life). So good luck to reddit, getting anyone to stay without the proper tools and right in the middle of the IPO dumpster fire