I think the first 12-24hours will drive many users into confusion. The lurkers will switch over within the first 1-2days, the active community will split up, some remaining on multiple platforms (incl. reddit).
Medium Term Impact
Reddit lives from it's moderators. But nowadays a good AI might replace that, will have a rough start but gradually become better. I still believe the communities will become streamlined and heavily automoderated due to lack of human reason. That will hurt discussion, conversations and though provoking comments.
Fediverse
The Fediverse will definitiv gain from this. Reddit will not see an immediate fall but gradually decline. The majority of users will mostly be lurkers.
What if...
BUT, with no API, no bots.. Maybe, this will actually work out for reddit and a more active community will build up again. There 's always the option for a black swan of any kind.
I think there'll be a similar amount of users to begin with but over time a poorer quality of moderation. People who want quality will experiment with other places like here until something takes off; the others will stick around for the memes.
What it will live or die by is whether its niche subs keep going or wither on the vine. Its big subs like music, gaming, funny, can be replaced by literally any other social media next big thing to take off. What still attracts people to Reddit is the 'oh, there's a sub for that' hook.
Web traffic will continue. A couple apps have already been selected(?) by reddit (or chosen to) continue with a subscription model. narwhal and I forget the other, along with reddit’s own app. There was no shortage of people mocking the protest and/or “IDK why everyone is upset, I like the Reddit App…”
Reddit lives from it's moderators. But nowadays a good AI might replace that, will have a rough start but gradually become better. I still believe the communities will become streamlined and heavily automoderated due to lack of human reason. That will hurt discussion, conversations and though provoking comments.
This is not really possible. How is AI going to moderate small communities? It needs to know what kind of moderator decisions humans make in order to "learn" how to make those decisions but there's not enough data for smaller communities. It's also not useful for moderating video content, content that requires intelligence to get to (e.g. paywalled articles you have to learn how to get around). It would be very expensive to download every PDF submitted to some academic subreddit, and figure out if it is relevant, etc.
AI can only make a good spam filter, but not much more.
Thats a really good argument. I only had text posts in mind - while I don't care for the platform "Reddit", I care for their outcome. Hope these ungreatful brats will see the results of their actions.