While I don’t expect there’s going to be any meaningful impact on Reddit once the dust settles, I do think this will bring a lot of new users to the Fediverse.
Reddit losing a few hundred thousand users is a drop in a bucket given their user base, but it is a significant boost for us.
I completely agree, the total number of users isn’t really that important. The three things that count are having enough users to generate interesting content, developers who can develop the ecosystem, and people hosting instances. As long as these three things can be done sustainably then the Fediverse will be around indefinitely, and will likely outlast all the existing commercial platforms.
Too much rapid growth can also be a negative because it can disrupt the existing culture and normalize negative behaviors on mainstream platforms. When the growth is gradual then new people are more likely to adjust to the existing community norms.