If the community is as important to the users as you believe them to be then those who truly do value the resources of the community will move.

I value the resources of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH and /r/piracy over the years so much that I came to lemmy. I didn't see /r/piracy's initial plans to do an indefinite shutdown as something that would hurt me, but something I fully supported and was more than happy to join them on lemmy to find a new home.

Reddit was why I found communities like those two, but reddit was not what I needed for them to always have to be on. Those who don't feel the same will just run off to whatever other piracy resource is there regardless of whether mods or removed or different.

So I guess what I'm trying to say as one of the regular people is you don't need to worry so much about hurting us.