I hope reddit dies if for no other reason than the less social media the better
You're using it wrong. Reddit is the only place, in the history of the entire internet, that has successfully collected all of my interests into one location.
Astrophotography, Astronomy, Art Deco, Scuba, Amateur Radio, Radio Astronomy, Motorcycling (specifically Moto Guzzi bikes), EMS/Firefighting, Vintage Computing, Maps, Woodworking, and most importantly of all, Yoga-- all in one place.
There were fora for all of these "back in the good old days" but the user base is 100x more active and knowledgable, they're all in one place, and there are super-niches.
If you go to reddit and only see companies hawking a product, you're the problem.
Like the people who go on TikTok and only see chicks. What the fuck are you doing? I go on TikTok and only see astronomy and scuba diving videos. It's great!
For moderators, the switch from being able to use third party clients to being forced to use the official reddit client would be like a programmer being told their favorite IDE/text editor can no longer be used for code, and you'll have to get used to notepad or something.
Existing code? Fine! No problems, you can run it like normal. Writing new code? I'm not so sure you will have nearly as many developers willing to work in that ecosystem. Third party applications are part of the core moderation loop of pretty much every subreddit that operates at scale, and depriving those moderators of the tools they use will be to the detriment of the quality of the site.
People saying this won't change much probably haven't tried to moderate at scale using only first party tools. It sucks.
I suspect those small subreddits will continue for a while.
I think the Digg similarity is correct. For the sake of a buck, Reddit is going to destroy their userbase. CNN has shown us just how quick that sort of downfall can be. Chasing conservative money looks appealing to money counters, but if it is the enemy of your customers, then you may as well file bankruptcy right away.