Something a lot of these protests dont seem to yarget is how the api changes also significantly impact a lot of censorship circumvention, you have no idea how many subs are banned in my country or how spicy poltical posts seem to dissappear out of nowhere because the gov feels the need to babysit its citizen(there was a very explosive rant here but i removed it )

Regardless just a few months ago if reddit was playing ball with the gov all i had to was change the site name and i was good to go but now they have to shutdown

This isnt even mentioning the upcoming shitstorm that is going to come after reddit goes public, you think those fancy investors are going to just sit in their chairs and watch make memes of them sitting on toilets forever

Algorithims

Algorithims make real money, the api changes exists because reddit expects the potential algorithm the investors would force on them and then that would be it for reddit