I can see both sides of this.
First off, Spez is being a greedy bitch, on multiple levels. Those API calls cost Reddit next to nothing in terms of data center fees for the traffic, compared to the traffic they get from browsers and their own app. He never expected these third-party app developers to be able to pay up. He wants to force them out of business intentionally and drive users to Reddit's official app. Why? Because mobile apps spy on people. A lot. That small percentage of users on third-party apps are not sending their user metrics to Reddit, they're sending them to the app developers. Naturally, the userbase are upset with this change in API pricing and exclusion of third-party apps because Reddit's mobile app is a giant steaming pile of dog shit that couldn't be saved even if you had a legend like Terry Davis refactor the code, and jannies on Reddit are used to the expanded feature sets provided by these alternative apps.
On the other hand, the Reddit jannies' spastic freakout, taking subs private, spamming NSFW content, and so on, reeks of typical janny entitlement, where unpaid volunteers believe that they're stakeholders in the site and have a right to dictate how it's run. They do not. They don't own jack shit. They're not landed gentry, they're jannies, and they do it for free. They can be removed at any time by the site's owners.
Though the Redditomachy has been very entertaining to watch, it has only reinforced my opinion that the fundamental client-server structure of the internet is a bust, and we need distributed web protocols to take its place. Today's social media sites are not in any way interoperable; there is no real data portability or interconnectivity between them, their APIs are all different and proprietary, and at any time, admins can cut users off from profiles that they spent years building, or arbitrarily restrict site functionality. And, of course, as Matt Taibbi and the Twitter Files showed, big social media sites use algorithmic manipulation to promote "ideologically acceptable" content that lies within the Overton Window, while excluding everything else, and if that doesn't work, they collaborate with governments on censorship.
This isn't how anything else in our lives works. When you go out in public and strike up a conversation with someone on a street corner, there is no middleman standing between you and the other person who reaches out and pinches your lips shut if he doesn't like what you're saying. If the internet is a public square, then why is so much of it controlled by a tiny handful of private companies who want to act like publishers, curate user content, and dictate every single aspect of how their platforms can be used? People ought to have sole responsibility and full data custody over their communications online, because that's how face-to-face communication outside the internet works.
Let's be honest, who the heck wants to suck the proprietary API and algorithmic censorship dicks of giant, centralized social media sites forever? Compared to the Web 1.0 of a diverse array of specialty forums catering to every interest, isn't this basically a vision of hell?
