If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I've only used Apollo so I can't speak to the other apps.

The initial spark definitely came from Reddit's clear backstabbing of 3rd party developers with the API change. There was no attempt to work with developers, just to remove them indirectly.

This being particularly bad when 3rd party developers were basically holding up most power-users, most moderators, and basically anybody who actually needed accessibility features (seems like Reddit's never heard of blind people by the way they made their app).

When you combine that with the catastrophic mishandling of the situation with that incredibly awkward AMA, the internal leaks, and the accusations towards Apollo Dev, it made it incredibly obvious that Reddit wasn't acting in good faith...

That's really what started the shit storm that's still raging now with the blackouts, subs and mods being blackmailed, subs converting to NSFW, the John Oliver stuff. It's all because of how badly Reddit mishandled the situation. It's almost like they forgot their website is mostly ran by the same volunteers they were screwing over.

However, I think you are right to an extent that if Reddit had taken the time to add accessibility and moderation features into their apps, and just improved the interface in general instead of just focusing on sucking the most money and telemetry out of their audience possible, then things would never have advanced as far as they did...

But I also think that's one mighty big "what if" because if they would have had the foresight to do any of that, they would've had the foresight to not mishandle everything else as badly as they did either.