I'm a casual daily/weekly user of reddit but rarely post and have never been a moderator. I only access the website via my desktop or mobile browser. I don't care about API prices per se.

However: this whole episode has left me with the impression that Reddit is a company hostile to its own users - that they don't care about putting users and user experience first. That makes me consciously want to cut down my usage and explore alternatives, because I trust the brand less than I did before.

I'm a long time reddit user and post frequently but have never been a moderator. I'm quite aware that reddit users are and have always been quite hostile to the company and especially advertising based attempts to monetize the site (and it would be fair to number me among those users). I've never understood how it was supposed to be profitable or create some huge exit for those who want out.

People get pissed off because they often end up doing the opposite of what makes sense for the business and the users.

In advertising terms, subreddits are analogous to special interest magazines. Despite this, Reddit's initial approach was to spam subreddits with low quality ads that had nothing to do with the subreddit's purpose. Going to /r/golf I saw an ad for a Samsung phone and then:

> r/movies tell us who you’re most excited to see in ASTEROID CITY. In cinemas June 23

They've also made the ads barely distinguishable from regular posts.

> I've never understood how it was supposed to be profitable

Not hiring 2,000 people would've been a strong start. Improving long-standing issues with the platform rather than churning through poorly implemented and largely irrelevant features would be another.

They could easily have monetised the 3rd party apps with a much less negative reaction by requiring users to purchase Reddit subscriptions for access. Users that didn't want to pay would migrate to the official app and the subscription earns more than the API fees would.

That's true in the same way that Wile E. Coyote doesn't care that he's run off the end of a cliff until he looks down.

Of course they don't, but it is hard to measure if they like the community due to the power users and moderators that do care about the API.

Yep, and that's why as the parent comment mentioned the threat is from what it does to content creators and mods - the passive lurkers and consumers don't care about the API but they do care about the content they show up to reddit for and if that tanks they'll have no reason to stay

Yeah, but they care about reading the stuff written by the API users.

Most of the monetizable users are passive readers of content written by power users. Lose the power users and the readers will follow. Maybe not immediately, but they will follow

>Yeah, but they care about reading the stuff written by the API users.

Based on what?

I'm really surprised by the apparently small number of 3rd party app users. It amazes me to think that cutting off apps that serve disabled users was even considered, though perhaps that was just a blind spot for the company.

Lots of users use 3rd party apps. All of them care.