Reddit isn’t profitable, despite having more than 50 million daily active users. In preparation for an IPO, CEO Steve Huffman put the platform’s API
It oozed bad faith. I’m surprised they didn’t just say “API is dead, here’s a new different product” if they were really eager to charge LLM scrapers the moon for training data, or kill apps.
I suspect someone in legal told them that would be a risk-- if they can’t farm out accessibility issues on third party apps anymore, I could see them having ADA compliance issues.
It looks like they took the “constructive dismissal” model-- make it hostile enough that the “voluntarily” abandon the platform. Then it’s not Reddit’s fault all the apps left, and why they seemed to scramble to find a poster child “accessibility” app and give it a sweetheart deal, so they aren’t completely exposed.