[pjc50]

The problem is that people are (a) using the 3rd party apps for entirely genuine usability reasons beyond ads and (b) while the API users may only be a small percentage, they're the ones holding the site together. Few moderators use only Reddit official tooling. Some have built quite sophisticated tools to automate their work. /r/music mention of having their own server for some purpose: https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/141tzgd/comment/jn2l...

The notorious Digg collapse was in part because of their fight with a big poster who was dominating the rankings and in the process supplying a lot of the content. They won against him, and the rest is history. Similar with Vine.