[ebiester]

It mostly wasn't the rank and file users making the most noise. It was the moderators who rely on the API for a series of tools (including third party tools like Apollo) to moderate the larger subreddits.

For me, it absolutely was a sign to evaluate my usage. I may go back, I may not. The local city subreddit is a good counterpart to my local newspaper, but the real dangers for reddit are twofold: individuals will be less likely to provide free labor (on which Reddit depends both for content generation and moderation), and it gave its most passionate users a timeout on which they started evaluating alternatives.