I expect it to be similar to Mastodon but perhaps not quite as big. That said, that service has flexed pretty well thanks to the tireless efforts of many instance maintainers. Hopefully a similar passion and level of support emerges here.
It’s the curse of VC funding. Companies love the cash injection, but it inevitably is followed by the demand to quadruple revenue and extract every ounce of capital out of the product. VCs destroy good products for capital. I’m glad to have discovered Lemmy and I hope the general Fediverse world of web applications continues to spread and get more of a foothold. It’s way better for users in the end.
The one issue with social networks isn’t necessarily the raw numbers, but rather what apps to your critical users use? We already know tons of subreddit mods use 3rd party apps for better tools. Power users – often those more likely to generate content – are also more likely to use third party tools. General consumers are more likely to use the first-party tool. What happens if there’s a dramatic drop in content generation, or subreddits get overrun with spam? The relationship is often complex because the user base isn’t homogeneous.
That said, as I get older I realize more and more that just because someone is running a company, it doesn’t mean they have any actual qualifications to be there. And this might just be a really surface-level evaluation and understanding on behalf of Reddit.