Cutting off and/or driving up the cost of third-party apps through which users access Reddit is changing Reddit. The impression I get is that third-party apps are disproportionately used by the kinds of users that supply content more than average, so even if they are less efficiently monetized as eyeballs, they are large indirect contributors to Reddit’s revenue. Making their experience worse will, it seems near certain, cost content that brings the users that are purer eyeballs to monetize with ads, and thereby cost ad revenue. How much is, of course, unclear.
> Don’t forget that Reddit can and already did close a bunch of subreddits that they didn’t like, so it’s their community, not yours.
Sure, and they can take over the moderations, and the content creation, and the viewing for ads from the users that they chase off. Not sure how that will work out for them as a business plan, though.