What's so sad about this is how easily it could have been avoided. Reddit could have done their equivalent of Musk's blue checkmark push and actually succeeded by simply requiring a paid user account for third party API access. Plans and pricing would have been implementation details to hash out, but they literally had everything they needed for it already in place.
Instead they came up with a half-baked approach that's a terrible fit for how apps in the Apple and Android ecosystems are allowed to charge and gave developers 30 days to be ready for it - or ~75 if you want to be generous and go back to when they said "hey, we were wrong a few months ago, we are going to a paid API after all." Sure Narwhal has negotiated an extension (the developer declines to say anything about it, but he's not eating months of API charges) while he prepares a completely rewritten version of his app that will work with the new subscriptions. *slow clap* I wish him well.
Instead they came up with a half-baked approach that's a terrible fit for how apps in the Apple and Android ecosystems are allowed to charge and gave developers 30 days to be ready for it - or ~75 if you want to be generous and go back to when they said "hey, we were wrong a few months ago, we are going to a paid API after all." Sure Narwhal has negotiated an extension (the developer declines to say anything about it, but he's not eating months of API charges) while he prepares a completely rewritten version of his app that will work with the new subscriptions. *slow clap* I wish him well.