While I am willing to give pg and company the benefit of the doubt, I would consider what you said to probably be the most noticeable difference that would matter to the bottom line of the parties involved who have felt the brunt of such situations.
With this new system, I can't imagine YC companies being called out on their dirty closets like they have in the past (any maybe indirectly large swaths of people who are employed by big co's who are power users on HN with those stories, or in general up and coming companies people engage with in the community).
I know some may feel I'm over exaggerating (because there are the passive bans through blocking upvoting/downvoting effects for comments/posts/polls, filters, hellbanning, etc.) , but I feel like until now, I have taken the information access, discussion that goes on here and all the interesting people this board attracts for granted. I just don't see it being the same place to discus/mention ideas/concepts and ask questions if pg and co decide to stick with it, and it just becoming more watered down onanism that it can increasingly be and has been on track to becoming more of up until today. But this is the internet, and moments like these may inspire someone to offer other environments.
On another note: I'm finding it really fascinating to be able to experiment with social systems like this. I'm excited to see the posts of people analyzing the affect of a change like this via the search api or scraping.