Comment by jrochkind1

When I look for reddit alternatives... the ironic thing is that I can't find any that seem to me comparable and offer even as much API as reddit does currently! (If you know of some, happy to hear suggestions).

Reddit's current API is pretty kludgey and weird, honestly. But it's there.

Of course, it's the threat to remove/limit it that spurred the protest.

But if it's so vital and important and only a cruel walled garden dictator would take it away... why do none of the potential replacements/competitors offer comparable API either? Even after this controversy, none seem to have rolled it out?

It's true that few are providing concrete examples of why the API is important. I honestly think it's more a basic _feeling_ about taking what users and mods consider "their" content hosted by reddit -- and which reddit has historically acted as if it agreed and not tried to "walled garden" the content -- being turned into "walled garden" instead. Just an intuition about one of the last places that didn't try to prevent integrations and monopolize the content moving in that direction. And I'm totally sympathetic to that actually, and feel similarly. Reddit was one of the last places that was happy to let users write their own integrations, for whatever reasons, without gatekeeping. (Even if the API could be a mess to work with!)