Agree that rationality is not a safe assumption. None of this has been rational- it feels like Spez is having a temper tantrum (as would a small child) and those around him are desperately trying to channel it into professional-ish actions.
Also makes sense if Spez is Ellen Pao 2.0- board decides unpopular changes need to be made, so they pay Spez extra to do 120% of what they want and be the fall guy. He goes nuts for a while, then resigns, and is replaced with some suit who looks good on TV and has a bit of social media cred. That guy then says all the right things to the community and walks back 20% of the changes.
This probably all pushes the IPO back a year or so, but if they think they can increase revenue in that time, it makes some sense.
At this point though I wouldn’t put anything past Reddit.
I have to think someone there is smart enough to know if they block fediverse links that’s a huge escalation that makes them OBVIOUSLY the ‘bad guys’ even in the eyes of people who DGAF about the API nonsense.
From the POV of a 3rd party observer, it COULD be argued that Reddit is just dumping freeloaders, a bunch of the users don’t like it and want shit for free, and it’s a stupid forum drama squabble.
But as soon as they start actively suppressing competitors, that becomes a lot harder to see as anything other than ‘actively stopping their users who want to leave from leaving’.