I agree with all of that, but honestly the more important factor is this is just not a very good cause to get all worked up about. Reddit is trying to grow into a profitable company, their business model is showing ads to users, they obviously can't just let millions of people use 3rd party apps for free.

I think even casual users understand this perfectly well. They don't use 3rd party apps for browsing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Tiktok (because those services also don't offer APIs). Why should Reddit be different?