It always amazes me that people forget that companies = group of people! And you would think people who have learned about sets and subsets would get it
Considering that anki can always be forked if development goes being hostile towards users I think this is a net positive. The most common complaint among new users is the learning curve and the UI. Both can be solved and Anki can flourish to the bigger level. I say this as someone who does 300+ cards every day.
It was a crazy year. Spent half of it living in my college building (Read about huge nationwide student protests in Serbia where students blocked all colleges because of the government corruption for almost 9 months).
Spaced repetitions only work if you use them every day with minimal or no breaks. If the algorithm actually does the recall probability very well like FSRS does, you will keep failing the cards if you don't do them consistently. I learned the hard way where I almost forgot like 80% of my spanish deck that I was certain that I will be able to retire and recall it. But nope, even that word that you felt was rock solid in your memory is gonna fade, so just trust the algorithm.
I would assume many consumers are gonna have to switch to more of DIY approach for many tasks that required some domain expertise. For example, most of my friends completely stopped buying useless skincare products because chatgpt would make them a table of INCI list and explain them the benefit of the ingredient. Turns out most of products are BS. Vitamin C doesn't even penetrate the deeper skin layer, it just evaporates on your skin. My bet is that many companies will have hard time marketing on customer's naivety.