To me “boycott breaker” is a much more self-important framing than this deserves. It’s framing it with picket line crossers or scabs. Happy to boycott, protest, and use my resources for things that are acutely important to humanity: human rights issues, unionization and pay issues, environmental issues, among others — and I have done so, including physically standing in solidarity. Third-party API access to a private company doesn’t merit a blip on the radar in my opinion.

However while I’m not happy about the access being shut down, nor am I happy that Apollo dev took his ball and went home, I am fully supportive in spirit of the unintended consequences. Notably: lots more diversity on the front page (meaning less reporting dreck from the same oversized subreddits over and over), and maybe even a clamp down on the self-perceived sway of mods, a position that tends to attract the worst, most power-hungry people, and their “moderating” of literally hundreds of subreddits simultaneously.

My guess is that, as I’ve previously posted, this will go something like the last boycott of the chat feature. Main subreddits will shutter, new subreddits with similar names will pop up to fill the void with identical content. In any case, Reddit is under the VC gun at this point and I doubt they have a choice here, in my experience with large VC-backed companies.