Control of the narrative is worth more than just money. So instead of just removing it, they just set the price to be laughable high so few, if any actually pay.

Reddit is also betting that the 'sticky' users who contribute won't leave. And I think they grossly underestimated just how fast content creators can abandon your platform for a more friendly one.

I also surmise that the API charging is to claw money back from aggregators and those YT shorts and Tiktoks that badly read a post and some comments along with an unrelated video. And also killing 3rd party API clients also helps adblocking efforts and control of the 'narrative'.