All the longer term users who keep the ecosystem functional will leave in frustration. That is, the ones who didn’t leave already over spez deciding to kneecap third party clients.
Once those users are gone, the death spiral starts.
Tbf Reddit revenue comes from ads that are based on traffic, so even if 99% of the accounts are fake bots they still make money. I think that loophole will keep them on forever
I mean, not long term though? Advertisers and Marketers don't invest if their ads don't have some ROI. And no bot is going to engage with an ad to the point of actually result in a sale for obvious reasons.
I expect Reddit to die in a couple decades for the simple reason that no social media platform will out last a generation of users. I could be wrong, as the modern social media landscape isn't even one generation old, and perhaps there will be multi generational social media platforms, but I just don't see it.