Are you implying that a user is worth $0.125/mo to Reddit? Because that is laughably inaccurate. Mature platforms like Facebook extract up to $60 per user per quarter in advertising revenue from developed countries. Reddit itself made an estimated $500M+ from ads last year. ~$2.50/mo is already more than fair. Thinking that Reddit owes full data access to anyone for pennies is absurd.
$500 million per year / 430 million users = $1.16 per user per year
$1.16 / 12 months = $0.10 per user per month.
Alienating power user seems like the exact opposite.
Plus, I'd bet that third-party app users are far more likely to be mods and/or heavy content creators, which means that alienating them will have outsized negative effects on the engagement of the rest of the userbase.
Again the devs are willing to pay some multiplier on this.
Developers already pay Apple & Google 30% for the privilege of being in the app stores. Is it too much for the very service that is powering your entire app to ask for their own cut?
Mind you that price is just part of the problem - the 30-day to start charging, was just as bad. It's absurd and completely made to kill the 3PS. Maybe if they have maintained the price but gave time for apps to discuss/adapt/replan, they could have found other options.
I use reddit 80% on the web, 10% on iOS and 10% on Android. I’m not going to pay reddit that full $2.50 (plus app store cut) for 10% of my usage twice. I’m just going to stop using reddit on mobile and stick to the web.
The “pay for reddit premium and get ad-free reddit plus unrestricted third-party app use” model makes more sense for users, for third party apps, and for reddit.