Scabs, dregs... its like I'm in Warhammer 40k. You guys play Darktide? If not: a question from non-native speaker: are scabs and dregs a, more or less, common expression/term in English? I'm just trying to escape the trap when you notice something, you start seeing it all around.

That's entirely possible, although last I checked Twitter is only on it's way there.

or they’ll have to hire people as moderators, which will cut into the profits they’re trying to show.

How many, on what timeline? They could go to this model eventually if they wanted, but with little to no notice it's tough. (I also foresee niche subreddits becoming frustrating to use when the generic full-time moderators don't understand them, and who knows how NSFW subreddits would work)

I have hope it's different from Twitter, because there's a party with leverage that's fundamentally different from mindless scrollers. Not to mention I'm liking the alternative I've tried very much.

I was reading a thread on here or Tildes yesterday and someone mentioned that what they think is happening is that the end goal is likely to have no actual mods an just have AI blanket moderators for the whole site removing the issue entirely. In all reality they're probably right, and Reddit has probably been working on AI Mods for sometime now, so they will only have to do this until they can roll out the ai software. Which will probably be sooner rather than later.