Actually I would argue that reddit does owe the moderators of subs - all of whom volunteer - a proper system of communication, which thus far has been completely absent. Of course, reddit doesn't actually matter, and as you say, if it disappeared tomorrow, all of our lives would continue unimpeded. However, mods do a lot of high quality and voluntary work for the site, and as such, should be treated with a certain degree of respect; something that the admins have never done to a legitimate extent. Just like you, I do not give two shits about Victoria leaving - that is up to her employers, however sad it may be for the userbase, and however fond one might be of her. The point stands though, that a major and essential part of arguably reddit's biggest commercial and most famous (outside of the site) asset, /r/IAmA, was removed with no notice to those who give up their time voluntarily to organise AMAs, thereby rather fucking everything up for at least 48 hours, if not longer, that they have spent their time, FOR FREE, setting up. This was completely symbolic of the constant bullshit that the admins spew at mods across reddit, and therefore was the sparkpoint for a protest against general poor treatment of mods, not of the sacking of Victoria. We joined in to show our displeasure at the admins' stream of crap, in the hope that the more subs were on board (as long as the community was happy for it to go dark), the greater the message would be to reddit management. This was not done pettily or for the sake of the "DAE Victoria!!11!!?!!!!1!" circlejerk.

I hope that clears things up.