TBF a lot of the backlash against the protest on reddit also boils down to "it doesn't matter to me, so it's not needed". Fact is if moderation is done right you don't notice it. I add new t-shirt bot spam sites to auto-mod the second I come across them, for example, so they only ever get posted once.

Reddit has had css since before the Digg migration.

as a user never asked for constant review of threads for rule violations

You might not, but us very satisfied users of the shining beacon of magnificience in reddit's cesspool, /r/AskHistorians, did and that was (is?) a model of the contribution to civilisation and human knowledge can be made in a well regulated space on the internet. But those very erudite and busy professionals and scientists moderating there will in all likelyhood throw in the towel and I am afraid anything that comes in its place in another medium would stuggle to reach the same level.

If you want to see what a forum site looks like without any of that stuff, look at 8kun/8chan. I don't think you realize how unusably terrible reddit would be without mods.