I have to say, well written article (too bad they only mentioned Beehaw and not Lemmin). Reddit cannot exist without user content and more importantly the moderators who do a hard job for free.
Without moderators, subreddits simply become a free for all, the far west.
Due respect but that is hella optimistic. None of that is going to happen. Reddit is huge. During digg’s downfall, their traffic plummeted by 33% in a month. Reddit’s traffic went down only 6% during the height of the blackouts and is already pretty much back to normal.
I kinda disagree. This is my conjecture, but I think the majority of users are ultracasual lurkers who rarely create content or even comment. I suspect that the people who use 3rd party clients are more likely to be the ones who create content, moderate communities, and are just more involved overall. Losing those users will be a big blow to content creation. They’re effectively killing the birds who lay the golden eggs.