Comment by torginus

I think the argument you present here makes an MBA kind of sense, but with the benefits of hindsigh, we know exactly what sort of costs this encurred.

People hated the redesign, and stuck with the old reddit UI as much as possible. The company lost a ton of benevolence. Alternative frontends sprung up overnight, which used the API.

Management was probably faced with the dilemma that if new features were only developed for the new UI, a significant chunk of the userbase would not get to use them.

This was probably one of the major factors on the decision from Reddit to kill the API, which created a ton of negative sentiment, some of it probably lingers to this day.

I'm sure a lot of people were either driven away entirely or significantly reduced the amount and quality they posted. While numerically small in number, we know that most of the quality content comes from very few people.

Reddit might have more users now than any time before in history, but I'd argue user satisfaction and engagement is lower than the days before, and the quality of the content and discussion to be had means most people don't bother.