This honestly sucks. Other subs reached out to their members to get feedback. Why is it that the mods simply decide what to do and make the rest of us no longer have a permanent place for discussions, memes, and everything PoE? This site is hardly a replacement, as not only does the UI suck but the number of participants is almost non-existent.
I think everything is up in the air for now and we will see what happens.
Many users have moved on to various Lemmy instances or kbin, and various subs have different plans. Some have also moved, so PoE is not alone in it.
As of now I know a handful of subs including some large ones like r/videos plan to be permanently private. Some others have made new versions on the Federated networks and are planning on continuing to use them. Or will move back to reddit.
I expect the reddit admins will start to replace the mods of any private sub with whatever power hungry admin-aligned person they can find. Probably handing over power to a power-mod that already has all the largest subs.