"reddit corporate"? Like Steve, who was the original founder and is the current CEO, or Alexis, another original founder, who is the executive chairman?
There is absolutely zero way they're unaware of the impact and I guarantee you they have thought this move through thoroughly.
You mention it like they haven't done a ton of user hostile releases, like the constant UX dark patterns to push you to a mobile app, etc. This argument is so strange, should we refute anything against Meta with "but the original founder is there, there's no corporate"?
I think the argument isn't that Reddit isn't corporate but rather that the original founders have thought it through a lot and have still decided to make this decision.
I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg thinks through all his major decisions a lot too. If you think a lot and your result is dark patterns, does that matter so much?
You seem to be assuming that if one says "they know well what they are doing" that's a defense of their actions, but I'd think it is much more often a denigration of them...
Fair enough, in that case this is Digg v4 levels of arrogance. Tons of moderators depend on 3rd party apps to moderate [1]. These people are providing free labor on an industrial scale to reddit and it might be wise not to frustrate their work.
Reddit moderators are, by and large, terrible people. If they quit, as the guy in your link is threatening to do, they can be trivially replaced. It is not a thing that requires much skill.
There is no shortage of people who would volunteer for something like this. The replacements might even be less terrible, both at the job (reddit is stiflingly over-moderated, as documented on r/undelete and r/redditminusmods) and in their dealings with users.
Given in the announcement thread they got wrong about it affecting third party apps at all and then on calls with third party devs do not seem quite sure if it will effect NSFW content or not, that does not seem to be the case.
Indeed, it seems to be a chaotic mess, as most of Reddit's "throw shit at a walk and hope something sticks" development methodology is.
There is absolutely zero way they're unaware of the impact and I guarantee you they have thought this move through thoroughly.