* The website to be free
* The API to be cheap
* The ability to use a 3rd party app that does not track, advertise, or monetize you in any way
* VCs to continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars to run the site and never ask for an ROI
Good luck kids
The average "Reddit" business is pretty odd; they want:
* Paying subscribers _and_ advertising revenue
* Free content: posts & comments
* Free moderation: voting & ToS enforcement
* The ability to monopolize said content
* Contributors to continue to pour millions of man-hours to make content for the site and never ask for anything like ad-free viewing, an enjoyable user-experience, tooling, etc.
Social platforms present a difficult balance between the users, contributors, moderators, and business - all within a very hostile internet (in terms of security, spam, etc).
For payment to happen, users do demand significant value to be parted from their $. In Reddit's case, the 3rd party apps are strongly desired because the 1st party app does not meet their needs (users _pay_ for these apps!). Reddit doesn't want to compete on UX, as they're demonstrably bad at it; partially due to lack of skill and due to mismatched incentives.
It seems like they incorrectly assume that they own the community, rather than the other way around. Reddit's primary value is in the content they are _given_ in exchange for hosting & tools - both of which are have significant downward cost pressure (which _should_ trend towards free, given a large enough community).
Reddit is trying to switch their customers from users to advertisers in order to make a profit, which is difficult after years of _generally_ serving users. It is bait and switch at it's finest and most egregious.