If that was that easy why did the 3rd party apps shutdown rather then raise prices to cover the API fees?

Reddit's model was kind of novel in that they did it in directly by expecting the 3rd party apps to collect the payment from their users but they did essentially just ask people to pay for 3rd party app access.

I cant recall any instance where a social media company successfully extracted actual cash directly from their users that ended well.

if you look at what reddit was asking it kind of evened out to less then $5,- a month pr user which seems to have been so much more then what the 3rd party apps was able/willing to charge that they had to fold.