Honestly I am confused by their confusion. Are they receiving a different messaging internally, than that being sent out to end users and developers?
I don't think Reddit intends to profit off their API, not in any significant way. The pricing is too harsh and will likely kill off most 3rdparty usage of the API.
This really feels like them trying to completely kill off the 3rdparty ecosystem, but do it in such a way that when it does actually happen, they can claim that it was all the 3rdparty developers faults because they had provided an API and everything.
> It's too early to know whether this will be a realistic option. From what I've seen, Reddit may be turning developer signups into a manual process where each user would need to message them and get approval. Also it's likely they'd crack down on this if they knew it was happening.
It might be possible, but it will still increase the friction to using 3rdparty clients, and that's probably the whole point anyhow.
They seem to be fully aware of what they're doing and what they're about.
It could also be a smokescreen so they can backpedal if the results are bad enough.