We'll see, but my bet is on they going full NSFW... cuz controlling that many people not to shitpost is gonna turn into a nightmare. People will get banned left and right, subs will be closed... people that are not into NSFW content will eventually start loosing interest in reddit and leave or delete their accounts.
They thought they could play the users like FB does... so did Twitter. They forgot one important fact. Most of the users on both of these platfroms are intelectuals. You can't play with that crowd however you like. They know they can leave or switch platforms whenever they like.
Eventually, they won't loose, you'd have to be an idiot not to see some good in every bad situation. As I said, they'll just shift directions, shift the site into a dating/hookup one, something like that, maybe also try to cater to the LGBTQ+ crowd, that could also draw some of the ones that left back in, etc. Eventually, they'll drop the IPO all together and just do PH does, show ads from porn sites. Hey, that's a high income business as well... maybe even go down the production road, become the Netflix of porn, who knows 🤷. I mean, why not, that's what I'd do, you could be the biggest player in the porn industry.
All Reddit had to do was STFU and wait for a month or two. Lack of any reaction or results is probably the most demotivating thing in all human experience. Go forward with the plan, say nothing, give no interviews, send no messages, do nothing to the mods or the subreddits, and within just a couple weeks, the users would get bored and force the place to return to normal. Either through pressuring their mods or just starting new subreddits with the same theme as the closed ones. The effect on the front page and the common lurker would be minimal and transient.
Instead, Spez has to go around slinging shit from his diaper at literally every opportunity, taking more and more extreme actions, hiding behind a fake mod name, saying super salty things to everyone, etc. He's basically the only person continuing to add fuel to this dumpster fire. It's literally just him. If he got sick or hit by a bus or something and had to shut up for even just a week while he was recovering, Reddit would lose interest in the whole thing, because without a visible enemy to fight, the users would turn their frustrations on each other. But he's clearly suffering from some deep psychic wound that keeps him from being able to shut his pie hole.
Reddit requires premium for changing themes and even the browser theme seems to be ignored in favour of light mode. Imagine if kbin/lemmy did that for free? (kbin.social)
Also Kbin does not ignore my darkmode settings.
Reddit says it’s ‘not acceptable’ for communities to go NSFW in protest (www.theverge.com)