The simple answer is that the protest was not an organic movement, it was entirely driven by the moderators of some subreddits, the communities themselves never wanted to participate, some were OK to show solidarity, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of users there weren’t being inconvenienced by the API stuff, some were even hostile to the mere mention of migrating elsewhere. Once the mods relinquished, everything went back to normal because it was mostly them being affected by the API changes.

They aren’t concerned about being owned by Trump’s family too?