I pay for a Reddit subscription. But I pay to support Reddit, for the greater community. (99% of the people I talk to on Reddit, don't subscribe). If they slap pricetags on their APIs and kill third-party apps (which is identical to killing all apps and all mobile support -- literally no one uses Reddit's app/website), the community engagement will drop, so there will be no reason for me to keep paying them a subscription.

I pay Reddit so that others don't have to, to keep the forums open for the community. Reddit does not seem to understand this, instead spending subscription money on like, avatars, or fake currency, or minting freaking NFTs, or whatever other junk they're spending all their budget on.

> The good old internet that we all love and adore was built on VC money.

Nah, the good old internet was built on reasonable product goals and simple ad revenue. (See every major forum that existed in every little niche, most of which went away when Reddit got popular). In fact, that is what built the original Reddit too. They didn't need any more VC money, they didn't need any of their last round. Reddit literally has a $350+ million yearly revenue. Reddit won, they have a perfectly fine medium-sized business, and one of the few stable/mostly-functional social media experiences still left on the internet. They should be riding off into the sunset.

Instead, they're chasing a stupid IPO. Taking VC money is going to be the thing that kills Reddit.

> I really really hope that we can leave this behind and have good quality paid platforms as standard.

If my experience is anything to go by, this will never work. Everything I pay for a subscribtion to, eventually takes VC money anyway, and eventually kills their product trying to chase impossible infinite returns. "Just pay for service" only works if the founders/owners can resist the temptation to gamble with VC's, and so far, none of them seem to.