If you're not that technologically inclined, or not a developer, you're not going to know what all the yammering about APIs are about, and how it affects your experience.
The moderators on r/Blind protesting might be all well and good, but it's not much of a reach for someone to not see how them being impacted would affect your user experience.
Same for all the shouting about power users, apps, and moderator tools. That's not a concern for most users, especially the ones who either already use Reddit on the computer, or just downloaded the Reddit app.
There wasn't a good, clear, short, coherent message, nor much of a sustained, co-ordinated effort to explain the issue, not what it would mean for users that aren't that technologically inclined, or engaged.