Yeah, I think that's a possible way that this goes down. I also think that if they did that it'd be a mistake. I think Apollo, RIF, and the other 3rd party apps are gone. Even if reddit announced yesterday that they were going to keep the API free, let alone negotiate a middle ground, I think 3rd party apps are gone and not coming back. On the 3rd party level I don't even really think it's the cash grab that's the problem, it's the lack of communication and trust. Even if reddit were to bend over backwards to try to keep them, I don't think there's anything they can do to make up for the lack of trust this has created in reddit's leadership. Same thing goes for the mods. The mods are arguably reddits most important users. They make the site usable for everyone else and if reddit was ever to become profitable I think the people spez would have to thank for that would be the mods who made the spaces that people wanted to come be a part of. They can't trust reddits leadership either. It doesn't matter what shiny new toys reddit may try to roll out to make their job easier, it doesn't matter what exceptions they try to carve into their new API policy. Common thread here is noone wants to sink their time into something that might change as fast as reddit has shown it can. Being a 3rd party dev or a mod takes a lot of time out of your day. Faced with the choice of leaving or laboring for a company that clearly doesn't respect the value you add to their service I think that most would choose to flee the sinking ship.

I left...reddit honestly seems clunky now...I go back to watch it burn but it's not burning enough :( maybe instead of John Oliver they should be posting dragons or something jeez

Even if reddit changes course at this point... I've found Lemmy. And it's just... better. And beyond that, it would take reddit years to recoup the goodwill they've lost with this.

Weirdly enough it got me more engaged with social media. In the sense that now I'm posting and talking with people on lemmy and mastodon more than I ever did on reddit. Weird how a place can get so popular it stops being a real community after a while

A lot of mods are community founders. They care about their community, not reddit. Reddits just a middleman getting in the way.

Imagine a group of friends. Reddit is the friend with the best house for parties, but is kinda a dick. The mods are the social ones that brought this friend group together in the first place. Reddit is being stupid and making dumb rules that mostly hurt the mod. The mod is trying to either get reddit to relax the rules OR convince the rest of the friends to leave. Truthfully the friends should leave, but reddits house is so nice and they're comfortable. The mod could leave, but they're afraid all that will result in is losing their entire friend group. The whole situation sucks all around.