Doing that is going to kill a huge percentage of Apollo's user base. It's not a foregone conclusion that the app will die, but the chances of that happening are much much greater now than they were before. If you were the developer of Apollo I think you'd have every reason to be worried about that, and any opposition to this change would be justified.
We're talking about the fact that Reddit's API prices are going to be extremely high going forward. Your response was a dismissive "just charge 9 dollars". Obviously that is going to cause a lot of pain for all third party developers, which is the whole reason why everyone is complaining about this.
Again, the thing that is going to cause more pain is not charging anything.
My point is that this whole protest is framed as “We have no option and no way to exist unless Reddit gives in to our demands.” But the reality is that Reddit literally gave them an option.
It’s like the “we’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas” meme. Just make people pay. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
If nobody is demanding free API access, why has the “movement” not put out a counteroffer for pricing that they’d be happy with?
My belief is that it’s because if they announce a number that is not $0, then everyone is going to find out that a lot of people are demanding free API access.
“Reddit is killing 3rd-party apps” is a disingenuous statement.
Is any app even planning to charge the new prices? If they don’t, then they’re killing themselves. Honestly it’s a great campaign by the app makers to whip users up into a frenzy like this because it means more profit for themselves if Reddit backs down on the API pricing.
You forget that people using reddit also provide its content. Should users start charging reddit now as well? Reddit would be nothing without its users.