I’ve a feeling you’re not wrong about attracting users who’re solely after notoriety, though I’ve a feeling it’ll only further water down meaningful content and discussion on the platform as that no longer necessarily brings with it much in the way of karma

Vocal minority though, surely?
I’ve visited a few times on Desktop (old.reddit) since the shutdown and the rate of new content seems to have slowed down quite drastically.

Twitter metrics used to point to 90% of the content coming from 10% of the users.
If Reddit is similar, it makes sense to assume that many of the very active users were on 3rd party apps (to improve the basic experience, moderation etc.) so those being unavailable could put them off entirely (I know I’m using Reddit a fraction of what I once was).