Well, we'll see. One of Bloombergs columnists just fired a warning shot across their bow by pointing out that they're rapidly losing their core audience and that a migration is practically guaranteed at this point because of their actions. Also bear in mind that Reddit is using astroturfers to aggressively push their "fuck the mods" narrative. Most people aren't buying it since now everybody is starting to see just how uniform their talking points are. And mind you, just as with the whole Wizards Of The Coast debacle, when financial institutions and newspapers start telling you that you're screwing up your stuff, that's real bad because investors tend to listen to those before making a decision.

What Reddit's management could do would be to simply scapegoat ol Spaz and feed him to the wolves by firing him and then saying "We listened to you, here's [reasonable pricing]" Then they could not only restore their brand, but keep moderators on staff AND cash in on people doing volunteer work in creating/moderating content while paying for it.

However, it seems that often, business intelligence people seem to lack basic insight into human motivation and empathy. And that's something that's been literally confirmed in science.