I mean, I think even still charging (a reasonable amount) for the public API, and in return bringing it up to near the standards of the Reddit-built app’s private API, and possibly allowing some ad revenue split with the large apps where by showing Reddit ads (currently impossible with the current API!) is compensated with some minute fraction off the API bill/paid to dev if no outstanding balance.

Reddit won because it was the Digg-alternative, they’ve always been on shaky ground if people just start posting less. What ever per-impression value they get now on their own apps/website will plummet if people just start using it less, regardless if they’re making ad revenue off every user or only some users.

Plus, yeah it’s an awesome LLM training resource. Make it cheap, why not? Your competitors are expensive, and your data is well indexed by topic and conversational in tone.