It can go one of a few ways.
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Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.
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A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.
No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.
I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".
How do I think this ends? I think it won't matter to their bottom line. Although I am happy with the participation thusfar, Reddit benefits not only from the current use, but the redirecrion from every Google search toward Reddit. Unless moderators deleted the content before they leave (idk if even possible), the impact is but a blink in a profit report. And the CEO will use their stability as a personal reinforcement.
That said, good riddance, I don't want those willing to stay to be a part of communities I'm in anyway. So far the new life here on Lemmy seems to be very cooperative and positive-- I hope this is maintained.
We run ads on Reddit to get a few suckers to use our apps. Our ad campaigns the past 2 days have sucked, so much that we started using Google AdWords again. That's permanent damage to Reddit's income, since a portion of our advertising budget has been redirected.
You're right, this will change anything major, but it's nice to know there will be a small ripple.
(And yes, Google isn't "better than Reddit", but an exitory ripple is the main point)