It's easy for them to attack the remaining subreddits when half of reddit, bent the knee at the slightest threat of having mod powers removed. Imagine how hard it would have been to do this if a majority of subreddits had stuck together.
Stop giving them content for free, they are milking you like cows. That's why they are restoring your deleted content, because they are making cash out of your messages. Leave reddit behind and enter the fediverse.
A user on tildes describes how to go scorched earth for mods:
Turn off all spam filtering
Disable minimum karma requirements
Allow all posts, disable all rules
Unban all banned users
Purge all allowed submitters
Turn off AutoModerator, Scrub all configs
Delete all CSS and uploaded images/maps
Blank all sidebars, Delete all flairs
Allow NSFW content, Enable sub's content on /all
Set the sub's color scheme on mobile to something vomit-inducing
Blank all of the text options such as the sub's topic listing
Grab a copy of anything in the wikis worth saving
Disable and permanently remove all third party mod tools and bots
Invite all users to the moderation team with full comment/submission privs
GDPR request for their own account data and then
Use it to delete their accounts and all of their content
The options in bold, they have no defense for. That's where the pressure points lie. The rest they can cope with, but not those options, not if lots of subs and users go that route.