My first assumption was that they were doing the same thing they did with that other political topic, ie: close the board and ban the topic.
But that's not what they did. They closed the board but the topic is still allowed, because reasons?
So I have no idea what the goal was, and I don't believe they've ever told us.
Whatever the case, they've gone about this in probably the worst possible way. All they did was take away a tool, a function, a feature of the site, didn't replace it with anything or make any other policy changes, and expected everyone to just 'cope'.