I think back to Ellen Pao at reddit. Ellen was brought on as CEO, and was the face of a number of very unpopular decisions. All those decisions had one purpose -- jettison the things that made the site rough around the edges, and find ways to monetize, so they could make investors happy and work on going public.

The backlash was staggering, and much of what they tried was rolled back. Ellen Pao took the blame for it, but it wasn't actually her fault. The founders just scapegoated her in order to make changes they needed for investors -- and depending on how cynical you are, they picked an asian woman so that they could channel internet racism and sexism as part of the distraction. Years later, they did the same thing, making multiple unpopular monetization changes, but this time the CEO taking the backlash is Steve Huffman himself, not a scapegoat put in front of him.

CEOs don't make decisions on their own, not really. This pricing change was the direction the company wanted to go in, and they got put on their heels, but only temporarily. They're still going to try to find ways to aggressively monetize.