@Gur814 @christianselig It's not even about money. If they just wanted to earn money negotiating with third party developers for a solution that serves ads and/or has a reasonable pricing would lock in a steady income from each third party app user. It's about control and locking down users to their client because they think that their value is in the user data, and not in their API.
@axelshooter63 Right. Which they believe will make them more money compared to fairly monetizing 3rd party apps.
Locking down and controlling user data = more money in Reddit's eyes.