Fire spez.
or better yet - make the reddit app so good....people wouldn't want to use another one.
He should've been just honest and transparent with server costs and how much Reddit Gold and ads were bringing in. They used to have a Reddit gold target.
From there, they can slowly implement API charges to make a tiny profit so they don't just lose money there or implement Reddit Gold/Premium tiers that offer way better benefits.
Don't fuck over the user base! Your users are what makes a site like reddit good! Don't they know that? Trim the fat (middle-management usually). Get out of the cloud if you're hosting servers in the cloud, move things on-prem. The cloud is great for flexibility, but for cost-savings, on-prem will always win. Whoever is the upper-management that approved the whole "charge for API use" - fire that guy too.
(rant) Too many websites have had upper-management take over and immediately change things that bring the site to its knees. This happens time and time again with new management. They think that they can bring some new life and revenue into the site and in the process, they cripple the product. It happened to evernote, dropbox, tons of great, cheap/free services that "couldn't support the freemium model anymore" so they cut cheap/free access to the product and people just went somewhere else. That's exactly what's happening now. (/rant)