[caranti]

There's absolutely merit to this. If Reddit can't fund itself, and goes under, all users loses a valuable community resource.

That Reddit have decided to end free access to their APIs isn't itself an issue.

The way they're doing it, and the significant departure from the decade and a half long de-facto agreement that a large body of the user base believe themselves to be party trading user generated content and user sourced moderation in exchange for platform access does seem to have missed the mark though.

It doesn't take much creative thought to conceive of a scheme whereby the paid Reddit Gold includes API access, for example. Which should be a bit like a YouTube Premium or Spotify Premium kind of deal - direct contribution as alternative to advertising to achieve per user monetization.

It's not even a stretch to partner with third party apps and let them collect the user payments as an alternative to requiring users to pay for the app and Reddit Gold separately.

But the very short notice period and seemingly unpalatable pricing, together with some of the reported questionable comments and actions from Reddit, don't come across as reasonable from any rational perspective.