The (relatively small) percentage of people that generate the bulk of the content on Reddit do rely on third party apps (and therefore indirectly on the API). A lot of the mods crucial to the site also rely heavily on the API or tools which are built on the API. Reddit has shown no signs of improving the mod tools, and without the ability to moderate NSFW content using the new API, Reddit will get objectively worse. It doesn’t matter if leadership remods subreddits and forces them open; mods and content creators now objectively have a worse experience and will produce worse content/decisions.
There's no evidence for that whatsoever, it's just bullshit conjecture stemming from hope and a tenuous idea that third party app users are "power users" and therefore must be eminently important.
I’d love to see a source for “people that generate the bulk of the content on Reddit do rely on third party apps” because that seems categorically impossible when you consider the number of users able to post (i.e. subscribed) using these third party apps.
