took a deep dive into how CEO Steve Huffman went from being Reddit’s co-founder to its much-needed savior at a difficult moment—and how he then became the villain at the center of Reddit’s still-raging protests: https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/reddit-protests-steve-huffman-api-chaos.html
This might be Reddit’s argument, but it doesn’t hold much weight. You don’t need API access to read a website, a scrapper does that. The 3rd party apps were always the target, since 1) they attack their ad revenue and 2) show the lacks of the official app, which is a liability before the IPO. Also, don’t forget that spez went to the media with the “threats” of Selig before he made any public comment.