Like every other industry, there's a growth period where things are new and prices are reasonable, and then there's the "squeeze" where bean counters come in, make charts that are likely bs, and explain how much easier it'd be if we charged 4x as much for half the customer base.
Twitter was one of the first to give access to cheap mass data, and now they're one of the first to charge through the nose for that. The move is going to be that if you're not enterprise level you're not getting this data anymore, and I doubt it stops with reddit.
> Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society.
You can see Reddit as a landlord, owning the land (or website) that the value grows on. They don't contribute value themselves, instead they make money by charging rent to everyone who wishes to grow value on their land.
That goes beyond rent-seeking into feudalism.
Rent seeking is running an application as a service that could just be a tool you pay once for, and instead have to pay for monthly. Charging people rent for access to a commons in which they provide all of the value is digital serfdom.