They weren't making advertising money from 3rd party API clients like RIF is Fun or Apollo. They decided to increase the price of API calls to an impractically high amount. This was uncovered by the Apollo dev, who recorded their meetings with the Reddit leadership, which also uncovered that Reddit leadership was lying about the interaction (accusing the Apollo dev of extortion I believe). Reddit wanted $12,000 for something other sites charged approximately $200.
(see the reply to this comment by neilv for information that casts doubt on the "reddit leadership lying" part of this)
Instead of charging 3rd party clients $5/month or something and retaining them, Reddit banned all 3rd party clients. But then went back on that after realizing that people with disabilities used 3rd party clients to access the site because Reddit's own app was not usable for them. Other 3rd party apps were still banned though.
People protested, eventually taking thousands of subreddits offline, which Reddit then fixed by replacing the moderators/owners of each subreddit.
There's probably more I'm missing, but basically Reddit tried to rent-seek but their engineering teams weren't able to provide the infrastructure needed to support API subscriptions for 3rd party apps.
> which also uncovered that Reddit leadership was lying about the interaction (accusing the Apollo dev of extortion I believe).
I wasted a lot of time going through transcripts and recordings at the time, and (to my ear, and knowledge of the world) the facts available didn't fully support the confident accusations that the angry villagers with pitchforks were repeating from each other.
Which injustice is kinda poetic, if you consider how Reddit as a venue nurtured thinking like "we did it, reddit!" and other collective stupidity.
> People protested, eventually taking thousands of subreddits offline, which Reddit then fixed by replacing the moderators/owners of each subreddit.
Reddit couldn't have handled this better IMO. Mods literally held subs hostage, which, when you think of it, is just so stupid it made for some good natural selection.
(see the reply to this comment by neilv for information that casts doubt on the "reddit leadership lying" part of this)
Instead of charging 3rd party clients $5/month or something and retaining them, Reddit banned all 3rd party clients. But then went back on that after realizing that people with disabilities used 3rd party clients to access the site because Reddit's own app was not usable for them. Other 3rd party apps were still banned though.
People protested, eventually taking thousands of subreddits offline, which Reddit then fixed by replacing the moderators/owners of each subreddit.
There's probably more I'm missing, but basically Reddit tried to rent-seek but their engineering teams weren't able to provide the infrastructure needed to support API subscriptions for 3rd party apps.
Edited to add: The initial Apollo developer thread is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
And the post that details Reddit leadership lying about the Apollo dev: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_t...