Do they want this?

Apparently they have no issues with nazis, but the moment you mention a minor slur in a youtube video you will be demonetized into oblivion, and don't even try showing some skin or they will call the FBI.

refusing to moderate unless Reddit pays them fairly for their efforts

What will really happen: new mods will be put in their place instead, willing to do the dirty work for free because they don't get the protest. They will probably be worse than the people they replaced and they will not defend their communities against the further changes the website will bring. This will kill Reddit as we know it, but it won't happen overnight, it will take months or even years, every community slowly draining away its goodwill while users organize new communities elsewhere, be it Lemmy or wherever else. At that point, Reddit will become a news aggregator or a boring social media websites closer to tiktok than it is to the discussion centered place it is now. And we won't be there to really see it under that new guise, just like I had to check to see that digg.com has now become a sad flipboard clone.

people just trying to one up each other on the comment threads for upvotes.

Here, have an upvote on me =D

the same revenue per user that they would get from the first-party app

Not a chance. They are going to charge significantly more than that. Probably 10x that amount and tell us they "listened".

Still I'm here as well. Now let's watch that place burn together I guess.

Damage control? Still I think they'll first wait for the strike on the 12th hoping we fluff it up

Unless they announce they're going to undo the pricing changes completely, I don't see myself using reddit anymore.

Well this news prompted me to discover this place, so there's a chance it could happen.

And...now I'm here. I guess I hope that works out for them.