TL;DR: I'm no fortune-teller but I feel like they want to change how we perceive and consume Reddit posts: to kill ways of engagement and make you just scroll feed.

I bet they'd add new subscription-based service, something musk-esque, that would promote you to the top of the feed or comment section. In new Reddit there are like a dozen of top comments visible before you tap to show more items. They'd probably be mostly from paid users. Also, no ability to visibly promote others' posts – it's bad for PR when something bad gets gold, like advertisements for Lemmy. And, in general, Reddit should (in their vision, imho) be like tiktok, where you just scroll through a queue of curated content – staying in comment section for too long or showing your opinion (with up\downvotes or gold a.k.a superupdoot) is wasting your time while you could as well watch some ads. In this case, killing comments and any kind of active and natural reaction is obvious. As a bonus, there'd be more advertisers, as critique of them won't get viral and their post won't get downvoted into hell. Oh, and if their board of managers won't get booted, downvote button and post stats would be cut next.

I guarantee there are spreadsheets and roadmaps and OKRs with a plan that ultimately leads to them making more money. Maybe it’s increased engagement leading to more ad revenue. Maybe it’s a replacement with other micro transactions. Whatever it is, it starts with removing rewards and the end goal is shareholder profits.