Even if they just came out and said "we don't want third party apps like Apollo anymore, we want one Reddit experience" it would have been at least honest. There would still be an uproar but not ugly like this.

Instead everything Steve has done has been duplicitous and in bad faith. Then he drops that memo and pokes the bear, does a couple rounds of interviews going "I'm so strong, mods are spoiled, I'm like daddy Elon, make me rich".

I genuinely don't know what he thinks he's going to get out of this. He should have just sat this out quietly and let subs go dark until they got bored and alternatives formed and the system fixed itself.

Side note: I've been disgusted watching redditors lick his boots and hate on the mods. In 13 years of using Reddit I only ever got banned from /r/conservative, so I don't get all these people complaining about power tripping mods. That got me to delete all my accounts.