I think they seriously overestimate how many users are going to really remain. Users go where the content is. Users will use 2 applications if the content is in 2 places. Once you get to that point reddit has nothing to offer. This will end badly for them.
Imagine your entire website gets moderated for free and you still can’t turn a fucking profit.
There’s always the nuclearoption: ban everyone, remove everything on the way out the door. I’m sure reddit admins can reverse it, they probably store everything in the database to sell later, but at least if they try to pull that stunt replacing mods they can be in for a huge pain in the ass.
Sure, but meme enthusiasts will go where the memes are. They’re not all on reddit anymore, and reddit isn’t even a good source for spicy content at all. They’ll go to reddit, right after they get done checking their pleroma feed or a discord channel. Eventually the engagement on their recycled gold will be so bad they won’t even bother anymore.