If Reddit actually wanted to make money on users of third party clients they would have handled this completely differently. I suspect at first they didn't rea

If Reddit actually wanted to make money on users of third party clients they would have handled this completely differently. I suspect at first they didn't really care about the 3P clients in coming up with pricing, they were looking at the bulk of API usage which is elsewhere (not sure where, but based on numbers provided by Reddit Apollo would be at most 1.4% of API usage and likely much less; other clients likely significantly lower given how Apollo was singled out) and looking at preparing to get paid for user content by VC-backed AI startups. Once the pricing was announced and the 3P app developers started complaining, there was probably a Cartman moment in the executive offices and things just went downstairs from there. Because of their hamfisted handling of this they're going to lose a significant number of long-term users, a fair amount of content as a noticeable chunk of those users delete their content on the way out the door, an absurd amount of community and unpaid volunteer moderator goodwill, etc. Reddit is likely to keep most of the users for now, but the reaction is also driving a lot of people to suddenly explore alternatives that would have been completely ignored before - and at some point it's quite possible that those popular clients that don't even have Reddit in the name will shift to providing mature and familiar interfaces to those alternatives and that may be enough to push growth. Remember that no social platform started out big. If Reddit actually wanted to make money from the third party app users it would have been almost trivial to do - require a paid account for API usage, introduce new paid account tiers ($18-24/year, $3-4/mo, the current Premium, a couple of more expensive 'family'/multiuser tiers). Have them variable in how much monthly API usage was allowed and other perks (e.g. multiple IDs with either split or pooled API usage). Run it through the payment system Reddit already uses which means they get almost all the money instead of 30% off the top for app store fees plus a chunk going to the app developers so they're safe from getting screwed by mis-estimating usage. Edit: heck, just converting a chunk of users to paid accounts would likely have been huge for them because it gives potential for converting even more in the future, plus the chances of upsells. But no, 'You have 30 days to change your business model, prepare to handle $millions/year in cash flow, and rewrite chunks of your software to be subscription-based.' Hell, the only 2 that I know of that even used subscriptions are Apollo and Sync, they might have had a chance. Instead, Reddit went for plausible deniability, 'we didn't kill the apps, they had a path to work with us but they all just gave up!' Feh.