And if Reddit does make positive changes those same passive users who believe anything corporations tell them (the type who call everyone else idiots because they don't understand business) will laud the charges and say how great Reddit is for making them.

This happens so often in tech. "Company X should never change' becomes 'i love company X because they've improved!'

People can be weirdly aggressive in how they align with their favorite corporate 3rd parties.

Agree but they lost good opportunities I think by not properly engaging with people like the Apollo developer. Someone who evidently understood their need to monetize their API etc but instead of thinking what's reasonable they seemed to have pivoted to crazy.

There was surely a halfway house?

Yeah but in 10 years it would be a nice conversation starter.

It's actually not an app it just uses a manifest.json so you get a wrapper with icon on your home screen.. Once launched its just the same as when you invoke the URL via browser.

Not your boss, luckily!

But yes the same ... This has reminded me of the early days of Reddit itself. Far fewer uses and posts so generally actually interesting rather than 'scroll fodder'