[actionablefiber]

Most Reddit alternatives were founded on the basis of defending "free speech" in direct reaction to Reddit banning places like /r/FatPeopleHate and /r/The_Donald. Their userbase predictably filled up quickly with shameless bigots and generated correspondingly bigoted content.

I am not absolutely certain that this will produce a viable competitor but I would give it better odds than anything else in the past. It is not only a direct, immediate hit to the enjoyability of being on Reddit for any reason: it also heralds worse changes to come. Deprecating RES and old.reddit is the next natural step.

Honestly I would say that apps like Alien Blue and later Apollo made the difference in making Reddit as big and durably popular as it is now. Killing them, especially so visibly and messily, will cause an immediate exodus of some app users and a slow drain of the others. It certainly will not grow Reddit.

[rcxdude]

This. The main issue is there doesn't seem to be a natural alternative like reddit was to digg (since, as you say, the ones that have popped up so far are often quickly filled with people toxic enough to get banned from reddit). So I think any transition will be a lot messier.