One thing I do wonder is that if the issue was the ads, why wouldn't they just say that Reddit Gold users would still have free access to the API and charge the

One thing I do wonder is that if the issue was the ads, why wouldn't they just say that Reddit Gold users would still have free access to the API and charge the rest? Then app developers could implement more restrictions/paid access to non-gold users while gold users wouldn't directly be impacted at least by Reddit itself.