It's going to end with a relatively small reddit exodus with most returning to reddit in a few weeks. People are lazy, and will concede to the API changes just like they all did with Twitter. Remember when Musk took over and made all those dramatic changes heavily monetizing the platform? Everyone was crying how Twitter will die and that they were all quitting. Well guess what? Almost all of them went back to Twitter anyway and now use the official app just like Musk wanted. Reddit will be no different sadly.
Reddit is different from Twitter. You stay in Twitter for famous accounts, not for the communities like Reddit. If enough of people (especially mods and power users) actually move to another place, Reddit will slowly die. The community-based approach of the fediverses I think works well with immigrants Redditors
I don't think that Reddit is going down, but i have seen users that post regularly on Reddit closing down their accounts and joining Lemmy, this will snowball into more joining Lemmy because the quality of post will eventually go down on Reddit and go up on Lemmy, this is just speculations and have a really lose base.
The communities you love are made of people, and people will go to someplace better. When googleplus ended, it was a mess in the initial migration. But soon people agreed to stick to better places, and the communities survived. Reddit is just a venue that used to be nice to hang out with friends and now is turning into a shopping center. It's annoying to change venues, but real friends will stick togheter.
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.
I don't think Reddit will die. This is a rough time. Reddit will survive. They will IPO, make some money, piss some people off, and once the dust settles things will go back to normal. Eventually something else will surpass it.
I'm not going to lie, I'm addicted to Reddit. While I'm not going to abandon Lemmy, I can't just leave Reddit. There are subs that can't be replaced. r/USMC is an amazing place to help active duty and veterans alike. r/Nascar has race threads that are fun as hell to read through. I'm going to limit my use to those subs that I can't get in Lemmy. (yet...)