It’s not just corporate reddit though. Consider the time and effort invested in these communities. Obviously I left because I don’t want to support reddit (and because their non 3rd party interface is almost unusable), but there are mods of small communities that have put thousands of hours into building up these subs.
Ask Historians is a perfect example of a sub that gets punished by modified comments (and they have been highly supportive of protests). They are so heavily moderated that every comment is 100% on topic and each comment lost makes the hard work they put in less worthwhile. Now each person has a right to delete their own content, but it sucks to write a 3 page essay response with citations only to have the context be removed to spite reddit. The mods and contributors of the subs are suffering too, and at a time when maintaining the community is much harder.
100% I will only be using instances that don’t federate with corporations.