I can say for myself that I became an avid DTer during the lockdowns and continued to drift in and out afterwards, out of habit. The Reddit blackout was a little bit of a reset switch for that habit - no longer instinctively go to r/melbourne when I open up a browser.
Still love the vibes of a/the DT (which is why I'm here!) but it stopped being such an instant thing that I opened.
Not sure how number of comments left over a 24 hour period has anything to do with "the downvoters" but OK.
My point is, it used to get 500+ comments daily. It's been limping along since the blackout, but to see the day end with a double-digit number of comments is something unique up to this point. I wonder how long until that becomes more common...