It can go one of a few ways.
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Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.
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A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.
No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.
I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".
I can actually see plenty of people and communities permanently migrating over to Lemmy instances. Some are actually creating their very own federated Lemmy instances.
So now, for those who created their own instances, there will be no more censoring and imposing from a higher organization.
I don't see why to not use Fediverse, Mastodon apps are great already, and Lemmy apps are getting updated and improved as we speak.
Yes, the web front-end still needs work, and yes, Lemmy still lacks in some features, but that is being worked on as we speak, and I believe that some of the users migrating over, are devs, that will actually help to improve Lemmy, which is Open Source. So, if there's a feature you'd like Lemmy to have, just open a Pull Request!
I think the web front-end works great, actually. Better than reddit (old.reddit, at least).
Works great as a PWA, too.
I agree that it does work, and very well. It just needs some work on the responsive design I think, and maybe aesthetics. But that's just a subjective opinion, not really an issue I might give it a go myself at it when I have some time and maybe I send a PR or two.